The Council of Everafter
by TheWorldDoesn'tStop
Summary: Two years have passed since the fall of the barrier. The Everafters of Ferryport Landing are spread across the globe, and those who remain struggle to keep their existence secret. Elsewhere, a new evil stirs. "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one." -CS Lewis. T for future chapters.
1. Homecoming

**A/N: Hello, me again. I've missed posting on this site. This new story is something I've been working on for a while. I've been wondering what it would be like for Sabrina and Daphne to grow up as immortals in the 21** **st** **century, and so here is what I imagine they (and the other Everafters) would go through.**

 **It'll also be a lot about P & S, and a lot less hardcore plot-driven than Tales from the Tundra. I don't mean that there won't be a plot; just that instead of a short-term big adventure, this will be the long-term life of the Grimm family, with little adventures and a lot of stuff to tie it in all together, and an underlying theme of reconstructing the Everafter community after the fall of the barrier. I'm also attempting to write this in third person omniscient, which I've never done before, so if anyone has any tips or critiques I'm certainly all ears. **

**Sabrina & Puck are 14 in the beginning and Daphne is 10, so we're about two years after the end of Book 9. Forget the epilogues. **

**Also, somebody help—do we know Sabrina's birthday? My guess is March.**

 **Anyways, please enjoy the beginning of this new story and let me know what you think!**

 _PART ONE._

The angle of the moon shifted, and new beams washed into the living room. Curled up on the couch, Sabrina was struggling to write in her journal and didn't notice when the soapy silver light from the window was blocked for just a moment by a shadow.

Lately, there hadn't been much to write about. It had been two years since the war, two years since everything had quieted down in Ferryport Landing, and aside from a few cases here and there, life was pretty much peaceful. Sabrina wasn't on high alert anymore.

She flipped backwards in her book, skimming entries from her time in New York City with vague interest. Once the barrier had dropped, there had been a mass exodus of Everafters from town, including the newly immortalized Grimm family. Henry, Veronica, Sabrina, Daphne, and baby Basil had moved back to the city for a bit, needing distance from the aftermath and prepared to carry on with their lives. But it had been too surreal, even for Henry, to adjust back to the hustle and bustle of mortal New York City with the knowledge of the underground world of Everafter that existed around them, among them, within them. And it became evident through phone calls that Granny was lonely, down in the house that had once been teeming with family. The Grimms had left, Uncle Jake and Puck were off seeing the world, and Red, Tobias, and Pinocchio had traveled to Asia to search for a way to permanently banish the wolf. So, they'd taken some time and made the decision to move back to Ferryport Landing.

One of the boards on the front porch creaked. Sabrina paused, decided it was nothing, and turned back to the current entry she was stuck on. The house was old enough to make all sorts of strange noises.

She put pen to paper and carried on writing about the end of summer. The Ferryport Landing they'd returned to was different than the one Sabrina had first encountered as a lonely orphan on a train on the way to meet a grandmother who wasn't supposed to exist. The fall of the barrier had led to an expansion more rapid than the little town had ever seen—new businesses and humans were moving in, the remnants of the Scarlet Hand were being built over.

Goldilocks, the city planner, had raised new schools, and Boarman and Swineheart had built Sabrina her own bedroom. She'd even made some new friends, mortal ones, and she slept soundly at night knowing that her entire family was safely down the hall where she could keep an eye on them. For the first time in a long time, she felt like she was _home._

Tomorrow was her first day of high school. After completing most of eighth grade in Ferryport Landing's new middle school, she was actually excited to start ninth grade. Her friend Alex was in her homeroom and Rachel was in her lunch period, she'd heard mostly good things about her teachers, and her parents would be there when she came home. Everything was on track to go perfectly tomorrow.

And then there was a rattling of a key in a lock. The noise ripped through the peaceful silence so aggressively that Sabrina dropped her book in her lap and sat up straight. Her eyes flew to the grandfather clock in the corner. Just a few minutes after 10 PM, late enough that everyone else was in bed. Looking around for a weapon, Sabrina ran through her mental list of housemates, trying to think of who could be on the porch with a legitimate set of keys but hadn't bothered to knock.

Granny, definitely asleep by now. Veronica and Hank, upstairs, she had watched them go ten minutes ago. Daphne, in the shower. Sabrina could hear the water running. Red, Tobias, and Pinnocchio, on a separate continent.

She dropped her book and picked up an encyclopedia from the coffee table. Then she slunk through the living room and pressed her back against the wall behind the door.

This wasn't the first time someone had gotten ahold of someone's key ring and made copies. Of course, last time it had been Charming, with some misguided idea that it would be fine for him to show up unannounced to borrow something, but since he'd left with a black eye, Sabrina knew it had to be someone more sinister this time.

There was the knock, releasing the magical lock.

"We're home!"

She knew that voice. It was deeper, but regardless of pitch, she would know that voice anywhere. The encyclopedia slipped from Sabrina's fingers and she took several steps back into the living room. Before she could recover and either walk away, sit back down, or do anything that would look more natural than just standing there gawking, the door swung open.

Suitcases and boys spilled into the house. Sabrina stared, her chest suddenly tight, at the sight of them. It had been two years. She'd forgotten how long of a time that was.

"'Brina!" Uncle Jake looked the same as he had when he'd left, except he was tanner and perhaps dirtier. He crushed her in a hug and she was overwhelmed by the scent of sweat. "It's been a while! You got taller!"

"You got smellier," Sabrina replied, wrinkling her nose as she pulled away.

"Well, we've been traveling for about 30 hours at this point," Uncle Jake replied cheerfully, stepping around her and leaving her face-to-face with Puck, who was sporting ripped jeans and a green hoodie that was slightly darker than his old one. She stared at him, shocked by how well she remembered his face after their time apart and by how long his hair was, barely hearing Uncle Jake continue, "Meaning I've been wearing the same shirt for 30 hours, and that's what happens."

"Speak for yourself. We could travel for weeks and _I_ would still smell fantastic," said Puck, smirking as he pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Hello, Stinkpot. Miss me?"

Puck's arrogance was what made Sabrina snap out of it. She felt her stomach turn to ice. So much for peacefully enjoying her life in Ferryport Landing.

"Not for a minute." She crossed her arms, disconcerted by how far she had to tilt her head to properly glare at him.

"So, where is everybody?" Uncle Jake asked brightly, wandering into the living room.

"They're in bed. The first day of school is tomorrow."

"I know," said Uncle Jake with a nervous grin. "That's why we're back."

Sabrina blinked in confusion, and turned back to Puck, who was wearing a look of uncharacteristic nausea.

"Oh, no," she said.

Uncle Jake was nodding. "Oh, yeah. Puck is starting high school with you."

" _What_? Why?" Sabrina snapped, all confidence she felt about the next day evaporating. "Why…you don't need to go to high school…?"

"Well, I can see why _you_ need to go to high school, seeing as you can barely string two words together," Puck said, pushing past her to flop down on the couch that she had just so recently vacated. Sabrina thought longingly of a time two minutes ago when she'd been blissfully unaware what was coming. "Honestly, I'm shocked you haven't fainted in joy yet. We're in the same homeroom!"

Sabrina fought the urge to gag.

"Uncle Jake, what is happening? How come you didn't tell anyone you're coming back after two years for _Puck's education,_ that doesn't sound like something either one of you would do!" Sabrina drew breath, her mind racing, and continued as the thought occurred to her, "Why does Puck know what a homeroom is?"

"He was here for sixth grade, remember?" Uncle Jake replied, tilting his head and looking at his eldest niece in confusion. "Where are your Grimm deduction skills, 'Brina?"

"Does he even know how to write? Or do math? I mean, he's the heir to the throne of Faerie! What good is a high school diploma going to do him?" Sabrina's heart was beating very fast. She curled her hands into fists so neither guy would see how they shook with rage.

"I've _always_ known what math is," Puck said defensively.

"Two years ago, you couldn't count to three without my help!"

"Look, Puck and I have talked, and while there's a lot of reasons for him to go through high school, now isn't the time to discuss them," Uncle Jake said, cutting off Puck's snarky response with a wave of his hand. "I know this was a surprise, but won't it be bad! He'll fit right in, what with the fact that he's still growing and all."

It had been an offhand comment, but Sabrina whirled around to look at Puck again anyways. His legs seemed too long for his body and his hands were large in proportion to his arms. Like the other boys she knew, he was caught somewhere in between boyhood and manhood, growing at an uneven rate.

It was not often that Sabrina could place Puck in the same category as other boys. She tilted her head and looked at him like he was a strange animal in a zoo. Puck stuck his tongue out in return, made self-conscious by the intensity of her stare for reasons he didn't understand.

"Jake told me that at high school, you can eat pizza every day for lunch if you want," Puck supplied, trying to distract himself from the unwelcome feeling by using the fact she was staring at him as an excuse to stare back. Her hair had gotten longer, and she looked— _older,_ more grown up, in some way he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Did you inform him about any of the other, less happy parts of high school?" Sabrina muttered, turning back to her uncle. And then she threw over her shoulder, "It's not even good pizza, anyways."

Puck sat up straight, his heart suddenly pounding. "What?"

There were footsteps on the stairs, and the three turned to see Daphne coming toward them in a fluffy robe, scrolling through something on her phone.

"What's going on, Sabrina? I heard voices." Then she looked up and let out a shriek of joy, her phone clattering to the ground as she hopped the creaky step at the bottom of the stairs and launched herself into Uncle Jake's waiting arms.

"Can we backtrack on this pizza thing?" Puck asked.

Sabrina put her hands up in surrender. "I'm going to bed, everyone. Goodnight."

"Goodnight!" Daphne chirped.

Sabrina flopped onto her bed in her room. When they'd returned to Ferryport Landing, Boarman and Swineheart had offered to build her and Daphne their own rooms, since Hank and Veronica were planning on moving into the room they'd all shared across the years. Sabrina had accepted, quickly turning down their suggestion to do what they had for Puck—she wanted to be able to have friends over, thank you very much—and had opted for a normal room, one that was clean and bright blue and quiet. They'd honored her wishes, surprising her only with a large bay window and a window seat that, when opened with a key, could store much more than it would seem based on how it looked. At the time had loved the gesture for its kindness, simplicity and privacy, and now she found a new appreciation for it as she began to Puck-proof her room, throwing old diaries and bras and snacks into its depths.

Once she'd run out of things to hide, Sabrina stopped in front of her mirror and let out a frustrated sigh. This was unbelievable. They couldn't have called ahead as a warning, or just stayed away entirely? Instead, Puck was back, no doubt with a thousand pranks up his sleeve, and the first day of school that Sabrina had carefully planned out in her head was ruined.

She couldn't believe how much he'd grown. It had made her heart pound to see him, and she only hoped it was out of anger.

Sabrina woke up the next day with dread in her heart. In the gray light of morning, she slowly got dressed in an outfit she'd picked days in advance, half-heartedly fought Daphne for the bathroom, and then dragged her feet down the stairs to breakfast.

" _Liebling,_ look who's back! Isn't this wonderful?" Granny Relda gushed from the head of the table as soon as she came into view.

"Just great," Sabrina grumbled, flopping into her seat and grabbing a piece of toast from the center of the table. She noticed that the two chairs that had been moved to the corners of the dining room after Tobias and Red's departure had been squeezed back around the table.

Uncle Jake winked at Sabrina, reading her scowl better than he should have been able to after two years away. "'Brina here was the first to know we were back. She caught us as we tried to sneak quietly in the front door last night."

Puck was the next to stomp down the stairs in a way that was so depressing, he gave Sabrina a run for her money.

"God, now we have two mopey teenagers in the house. Does life get better than this? Good morning, sweetheart," Hank said, kissing his daughter on the side of the head as she rolled her eyes. "Welcome back, Puck, Jake."

Puck pressed his lips together and then said in a voice that was dripping sarcasm, "We're starting high school, Hank. Wouldn't miss it for the world."

Dropping into the empty chair next to Sabrina, he turned to her and pointed an accusatory finger. "This is all your fault still, you know."

Sabrina dropped her fork and glared at him. "How?"

Puck placed three pancakes from the tall stack in the center of the table on his plate, set his plate down in the middle of the table, and took the rest of the stack. "It just is. You're the one who hit me with the puberty virus."

Sabrina gave Uncle Jake an accusing glare. "You were able to convince him to go to school but couldn't go over what puberty actually is?"

"Oh, I have. He knows. I think he's just giving you a hard time," Uncle Jake said matter-of-factly, reaching for the syrup. Puck turned to Sabrina and gave her a wide, mocking smile. Sabrina's stomach turned at the sight of the half-chewed food in his mouth and whatever appetite was left in her nervous stomach vanished.

"I missed making your life miserable," said Puck. Across the table, Hank massaged his temples.

"The past two years have gone great, thanks for asking. I'm so glad you're back to ruin the next four!"

With that, Sabrina swept her dirty dishes off the table and stormed into the kitchen. "Give it a few days, Puck, and you'll regret coming back here to go to _high school_."

"Sabrina's going into high school, but I'm going into sixth grade," Daphne announced from her seat. "Are we sure Puck shouldn't also be entering sixth grade? I mean, is he ready for ninth?"

Crossing her arms, Sabrina, who had returned to lean against the doorframe, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, good point, Daphne. Have you ever done Algebra, Snotface? Maybe he could go to preschool with Basil instead."

Around a mouthful of food, Puck asked, "What is an Algebra?"

Uncle Jake, however, cut in. "Puck does have a basic understanding of a lot of concepts from our travels. When we were treasure hunting, we had to read old texts, we were constantly learning foreign languages, he knows European history well, having lived it. He even started keeping a Grimm journal."

There were noises of surprise from around the table. Puck waved his arms in alarm and forced himself to swallow. "Hold on, Jake. That isn't a Grimm journal. That was just a place to record our adventures in case we ever needed to look back on them."

"That _is_ what a Grimm journal is," Daphne interjected.

Uncle Jake held up a placating hand. "Doesn't matter what kind of journal it is. The point I'm trying to make is that he's had practice reading, writing, and critical thinking. Puck will be just fine."

He sat back in his chair and refocused his attention on breakfast. Puck took a breath, calmer now after Uncle Jake's words, and tried not to notice how Granny Relda was watching him in concern.

"I also have an announcement," Veronica said once everyone had settled down again. "We're hosting a meeting with Robin Hood and a few other close friends this Friday, so nobody make plans. I won't say anything more now, but I think you all will find it very interesting."

"What are we going to be talking about?" Sabrina asked.

"I think we'll let Robin Hood handle that," Granny replied in a tone that suggested this was not up for debate. "All right, kids, time to go. Sabrina, you'll drop Daphne off at the middle school, right?"

Fifteen minutes later, Sabrina hugged a nervous Daphne goodbye on the stairs on Ferryport Landing Middle and carried on down the street to the high school. Puck was sullen and silent beside her, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and Sabrina found herself eyeing him, wary of this version of Puck who had suddenly appeared. She knew she needed to stay on defense, but he looked ridiculously normal, fiddling with the straps of his new backpack like he didn't know how to wear it. Someone—Uncle Jake, she supposed—had taught him how to run a comb through his hair, and he was cleaner than she had ever seen him.

"So, what did Uncle Jake do to convince you to come back here?" Sabrina asked when he caught her looking.

"He didn't _do_ anything. It's simple. We left and now we're back, that's all," Puck said, looking at her sideways. When Sabrina didn't respond, he sighed, figuring it would be okay to tell one person, and grumbled, "Plus he said there's something top secret that's about to happen here and we need to be a part of it."

Sabrina ground to a halt. "Top secret? Am I a part of it?"

Puck wheeled around. "I don't know. He wouldn't say anything else."

"Wait," Sabrina said, holding up her hands. "Something so top secret it'll keep you here for four whole years?"

Puck frowned and repeated, "I don't know."

"Ugh." Sabrina bit her lip and then started walking again, unable to keep her mind off of the first day of high school, regardless of top secret missions. "Let me see your schedule."

He fished a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over. Sabrina pulled hers out as well and compared them as the walked, her blood pressure rising as she did.

"We have _almost every class together_!" She said, and let out a growl of frustration. "Why would Uncle Jake do that?"

Puck snatched the papers from her and read them himself. "I have to spend all day with you? That sounds awful! What was that?"

Puck stopped so suddenly that Sabrina walked past him.

"What was what?" Sabrina asked, but Puck simply held a finger to his lips and waited, trying to locate the source of the sound that had whispered in his ear.

"Over here," he said, turning off the sidewalk and stepping into the woods beyond. Ferryport Landing might be more developed than it once was, but even with school walking distance from the Grimm house, the forest was still everywhere.

"Puck, we're going to be late," Sabrina called after him. She crossed her arms, briefly debating leaving him to do whatever it was he was doing before following him.

Puck wove between trees and stepped through brambles, his bright blue backpack making him easy to follow. He scanned the trees and the undergrowth, searching for clues.

Sabrina realized that he was tracking something and began to look as well, noting a few broken tree branches and places in the undergrowth that looked trampled.

She felt irritation prickle her skin. How had Puck picked up on some slight clue that she'd missed? _She_ was the one who was an expert tracker.

"How did you know there was something over here?"

"We spent a few weeks in the Amazon," he replied, distracted. "I heard the same sort of the thing there."

Dropping to his knees, he plucked something of the ground. Sabrina approached him and leaned to look over his shoulder. Puck held the thing up higher—a small piece of torn fabric, brown with dried blood. He turned to look at Sabrina, one eyebrow cocked.

"You probably shouldn't touch that," Sabrina said, wrinkling her nose.

"Has anything weird happened while Jake and I were gone, or did everything seem to calm down after the barrier dropped?" Puck asked.

"It calmed down for sure," Sabrina said, checking her watch.

Puck held the fabric up to his nose and then looked up. "It's too quiet. Whatever left this behind must have taken flight."

He stood and seemed to brace himself for a minute. "Ow!"

"What?"

"My backpack is getting in the way of my wings!"

"Puck, come on! It's the first day and we're going to be late. You can't fly away right now."

"You're such a nerd," Puck replied scathingly. "And I could too fly away."

They returned to the sidewalk and finished the walk to school, where Sabrina had what had to be the worst first day of school of her life, followed by one of the worst first weeks of school she'd experienced. Sabrina had been prepared to get lost in the hallways, which she had once, and forget her locker combination, which she had twice, and walk into the wrong classroom, which she had three whole times. She had even prepared herself to deal with the secondhand embarrassment brought on by Puck. Puck seemed to have forgotten all of the rules that exist in human schooling, including having to ask to use the bathroom, having real deadlines, and the fact that students would get penalized for not being in school from 7:43 to 2:17, whether or not he actually wanted to be there. After several incidents that ended in Granny or Jake showing up at the principal's office, Sabrina was ready to strangle him for inadvertently pulling her into the spotlight with him.

Because, although Ferryport Landing High was such a young school that the appearance of a new boy should not have been an anomaly, Robin Goodfellow had managed to capture the attention of his fellow classmates within minutes of his arrival. All of the other freshman girls seemed fascinated by his existence for a single reason that made Sabrina want to pull her hair out: Puck had gotten hot.

And this was a problem that Sabrina had found herself wholly unprepared for.

It wasn't that he was hot, not actually, Sabrina told herself. But he given his four-thousand-year lead on his classmates, he was comfortable enough in his own skin to _seem_ more attractive than the other fourteen-year-old boys in their grade. Their classmates were so in awe of him that no one had even questioned the quick establishment of his nickname.

And somehow, they all knew that Sabrina lived with him.

On Thursday, Sabrina slid into her desk for first period Spanish and was unpacking her backpack when her friend Arianna dropped into the seat next to her and spun to face her so fast that Sabrina didn't know how she didn't get whiplash.

"I cannot believe you get to see Puck whenever you want," she gushed.

Sabrina resisted the urge to roll her eyes as the two girls in the row in front of them turned around. Although she knew them, Sabrina had never talked to either of them before.

"You live with Puck?" asked Emily.

Sabrina felt her cheeks warm. "Yes."

"Wait, why? Is he your cousin or something?" Anna prodded.

"Uh," Sabrina began, trying to remember the story Granny Relda and Uncle Jake had forged the hour before the first day of school. "No, my grandma actually fostered him for a while and then my uncle in Philadelphia adopted him, and they just moved back to town this summer."

Emily put a hand over her heart. "He was a foster kid?"

"What happened to his parents, does he remember them?"

"Why did your uncle adopt him and not your grandmother?"

The start of class spared Sabrina from answering, which was good, because her head was starting to pound. As the teacher began to drone on, Sabrina sat back in her seat and crossed her arms, feeling unsettled. She'd known from the moment Tobias told them he'd written them into the Book of Everafter that immortality came with a price. But it wasn't until the first week of having Puck around that she realized how steep that price was. When she had to lie about who Puck really was, it felt like she was, by extension, lying about herself. And she realized, sitting in the back of her Spanish classroom, that she would be lying about who she was, who her family was, for the rest of her life. Her headache intensified, and as the teacher dropped a thick packet of vocabulary on her desk, she couldn't stop herself from letting out a groan.

"I know," Arianna mutter conspirationally, leaning into the gap between their desks. "Mrs. Chandler is the worst. My sister had her a few years ago and she said she assigns this much homework all year round."

She rolled her eyes. Sabrina forced a smile onto her face and said something truthful for the first time since she'd sat down.

"This year is going to be awful."

* * *

And so by the time Sabrina dragged herself through the front door of the Grimm household on Friday afternoon, she was worn out and sick of dealing with people. All she wanted was to lie in her bed and watch Netflix, but Robin Hood was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a plate of lime green cookies that Granny had set out. In the insanity of the week, she'd completely forgotten they were having a meeting.

"Welcome home! How was school?" Granny asked, bustling into the dining room with a stack of journals on hand. Before Sabrina, Puck, or Daphne could answer, she was ushering them into the living room, where she'd added a bunch of chairs, creating a circle of seats with the couches.

"Granny, it looks like you're hosting a cult meeting," Sabrina said as the old woman pushed her into a chair.

Granny laughed. "Don't be silly, _liebling_! Now, listen out for the secret knock, will you? Do not open the door unless whoever's outside does the secret knock!"

"What is this meeting about?" Daphne yelled around a mouthful of cookie crumbs. She and Puck had been bugging the adults all week to tell them, to no avail.

"You'll find out when it starts!" Veronica called from the kitchen. Daphne sat back with a huff. Puck pulled out his phone, and Sabrina closed her eyes and pretended she was elsewhere.

"Thank you all for joining us today. Please be seated," Robin Hood said about twenty minutes later, looking up from his legal pad to scan the room. The entire Grimm family and a smattering of Everafters were present, and Robin Hood waited patiently for everyone to find a seat before continuing. "I call to order the first unofficial meeting of the Council of Everafter. Our objective is to integrate the Everafter and human communities that exist after the fall of the barrier, while keeping humans from discovering our presence. Veronica."

Sabrina glanced at Daphne, who looked back at her in confusion. Whatever she'd been expecting from this meeting, it hadn't been this. Based on confused looks around the room, the Grimm sisters weren't the only ones who'd been left in the dark.

From the seat on Robin Hood's left, Veronica spoke. "We have gathered you all here today to present our case and ask for you to join us. For those of you who don't know, the Council of Everafter was established about a year after the war ended, and the founding members—Robin Hood, Little John, Snow White, Relda, Tobias, and I—have chosen each of you individually with the hope that you'll help us build a new government. The only people invited who were unable to attend today were Tobias Clay and Red Riding Hood. Otherwise, we have kept our plans on a strict need-to-know basis, and ask that you do not disclose them with anyone outside this circle, at least not yet."

Sabrina fidgeted in her chair and looked around at the Everafters present—Snow White and Charming, Hamstead, Baba Yaga, Buzzflower, Morgan and Mordred, and Robin Hood and Little John. A few years ago, this scenario would have made her hostile and nauseous. She would have questioned whether they could be trusted. Now, she just felt uncomfortable in a vague sort of way that had to do with the fact that she was now one of them. The same, and yet so different.

"First item on the agenda today is to discuss the Everafter population. Recently, Morgan le Fay has helped me monitor the movement of Everafters after the fall of the barrier," Robin Hood continued, waving his hand. A map tacked to a corkboard appeared behind him and hovered in thin air. Another wave, and sixteen smaller versions of the map appeared and soared into each person's lap.

Sabrina looked down at hers. It was a world map, with glowing red dots scattered across it. Most of the dots were concentrated in the New York area, with a gigantic red splotch over New York City.

"Each dot represents a population center, where Everafters who were once trapped by the barrier are currently residing," Robin Hood continued. Sabrina had never seen him so composed and professional. "Bigger dots have higher populations. As you can see, while many of us remain in the area, many more have spread across the globe. We have population centers in California, Scotland, South Africa, and Australia. Between Faerie and a lot of Everafters that moved from Ferryport Landing, our greatest population concentration is in New York City."

"Titania recently reached out to me to say they some of our people have been creating problems. It seems that after centuries in Ferryport Landing, some Everafters have forgotten why we need secrecy, why the barrier was created in the first place. Her fairy godfathers have had to dust humans who, thanks to certain Everafters who shall not be named, accidentally led them to Faerie," Granny Relda said. "Humans get hostile when they find things they don't control or understand."

"This is just one example of Everafters running around wreaking havoc on the local humans and accidentally exposing the Everafters who were smart enough to stay out of the spotlight for this long. They're using magic in broad daylight and not bothering to dust bystanders," said Robin Hood. "When we first heard about these incidences, we realized that we need to have some sort of rulebook for twenty-first century Everafters. We need laws, we need law enforcement, we need a structure that will keep the human world from discovering our secrets."

"Obviously, this is something that has never been attempted before," Snow cut in. "Getting it right will be tricky."

"Basically, we have called you all here because we are interested in your help with building the foundation of a new set of Everafter laws," Robin Hood continued. "Little John and I have the training to write them. Snow and Charming have experience in local government, Puck understands the Everafter monarchy system, Hamstead was a sheriff not only here but also in the city, and the Grimm family has a strong background in detective work. The rest of you have strong backgrounds in magic and can help us figure out how to contact people and organize this well."

"We're looking to enlist your family as a sort of secret service," Little John explained quietly to Sabrina, and Daphne, seeing their blank stares. "Like what you've been doing in town, but on a larger scale."

Daphne bit down on her palm. She had been doing this less frequently lately, which was how Sabrina knew she was extra excited. "You mean, you want us to be spies?"

Little John shrugged and nodded.

"Whoa," said Hank, holding up his hands. "Perhaps the adults can help, but Sabrina and Daphne are far too young for this sort of thing."

Sabrina scowled. "No, we're not."

"We're two years older than we were when we saved the world," Daphne added. "We're also immortal, so age is literally but a number."

Hank looked at Veronica for help, but she just gave him a crooked smile.

"You knew about this all along, didn't you?" Hank asked his wife.

The smile melted into a smirk. "Yes, dear. You and I both know that the girls will be fine."

"I'm always the last person to find out about things," Hank grumbled, but he sat back in his chair and didn't argue further. Sabrina thought that her father had mellowed out since their return to Ferryport Landing, perhaps because nothing the girls threw at him could match the trauma they'd all experienced during the war.

"Last order of business," said Robin Hood. "The Scarlet Hand."

All side conversations ceased, and a heavy silence rolled over the room.

Robin Hood sat with his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped, and waited until he had everyone's full attention.

"We have a strong reason to believe that they are regrouping," he said solemnly. "Yes, the Grimm girls destroyed the Master, yes, many members died and renounced their ways after the barrier fell, _but that was only within Ferryport Landing._ The Scarlet Hand is worldwide, and now that Ferryport Landing has rejoined the outside world, the outer reaches of the Scarlet Hand are our problem as well."

"Not to mention," Little John cut in, "That all of the members of the Scarlet Hand that we trapped in the castle during the war were also freed when the barrier dropped. Who knows where they all are now, or where their loyalties lie."

"In short, it's time that we organized ourselves as Everafters, and we're looking for a small, dedicated team of people to help us do. You've heard what we have to say. I urge you all to go home and take a few days to mull our offer over. We'll be reaching out to each of you individually over the course of the week to go over this in more detail, but we hope that you each decide to come on board."

Robin Hood stood and clapped Little John on the shoulder. "Meeting adjourned."


	2. Fire to Ashes

"All right, that's everything for today. Good work, class!" Snow White said, clapping hands. "Our next meeting is Thursday, right?"

"Right," Sabrina confirmed, getting off the ground with difficulty. They'd been practicing gymnastics tricks today, with the goal of eventually being able to use them in hand-to-hand combat, and despite the thick mats that Snow had laid down all around her studio, Sabrina's muscles felt like water and she knew she would barely be able to move tomorrow.

"Puck and Sabrina, Relda told me you're meeting friends at Sacred Grounds. So I'm only driving you three home, right?" Snow gestured to Daphne, Red, and Pinnocchio, the only other members of the private combat and defense "class" that Snow taught about twice a week.

"Yeah, we can walk there," Puck said, chugging his water and then squirting some on his head. He shook like a dog, smirking when Sabrina was hit by drops and flinched away. Across the room, Red and Pinocchio worked together to put away the mats. They'd arrived back home with Tobias about a week earlier and had jumped into the classes with gusto. Sabrina was originally surprised when they'd agreed to join in, but it was nice to have more people in the class besides Puck and her sister.

"Can you take our backpacks?" Sabrina asked.

"Sure, just give them to Daphne. I'm staying at your house because the Founders are meeting later tonight," Snow said to Sabrina, slipping into her coat. "So just text me if you want to be picked up later."

"I think Puck was going to fly us, but I will," Sabrina said.

"Okay, just be careful with that," Snow warned as Puck came to join them. "There are a lot of humans around now. If you fly home don't let anyone see you."

"I know," Puck said with a groan. "I get this lecture every time I want to fly somewhere."

"It's the way life is now," Snow sighed, and led the way out of the _Bad Apples Defense Studio_ that she'd opened in the past year. She was still the mayor of town, which meant that the studio was only open for odd hours during the week, but she went out of her way to make sure the Grimms and the other Council members had access to it for training.

"See you later," Sabrina said to the group, waving as Snow fumbled with the key to the studio door. She and Puck set out down Main Street towards the coffeehouse. At 4:00 PM in early November, the air was crisp and chilly, but they were warm enough from practice that neither one wore their coats.

"Who are you meeting today?" Puck asked as they passed the library.

"Rachel, Maddie, and Arianna," Sabrina replied. "What about you?"

"Jake and Brian. Not sure who else is coming."

Sacred Grounds had somehow become the designated after-practice hangout location for nearly everyone in their grade. They reached the coffeehouse and stepped inside, already knowing it would be packed with kids on the cross country, track, and football teams before they looked up from their phones. Sabrina went left and Puck went right, forgetting all about each other as they met up with their respective friends.

"Hey, Sabrina," said Rachel as Sabrina slid into their booth. "Arianna's in line if you want something."

"I texted her and asked her to get me tea. How was cross country practice?"

"Not bad. Except Maddie got lost in the woods," Rachel said with a shrug.

"She _what_?" Sabrina cried.

I mean, it was fine, I found my way out," Maddie said as she and Arianna returned with muffins and Sabrina's drink. "But I saw something so weird out there."

Sabrina's heart leapt into her throat. _So weird_ could mean anything at all in Ferryport Landing. "What was it?"

"An abandoned campsite. Well, a fire pit that was full of ash and charcoal. And some bones that were probably from chicken legs," Maddie said, pushing her muffin across the table at Sabrina as an offering. Sabrina had become a lot closer with Maddie since the beginning of the school year. Although she was still a little obsessed with Puck, she was also a good friend and Sabrina liked having her around more than she thought she would.

Sabrina broke off a piece. "This was behind the high school?"

"Well, between the high school and middle school. So not too far from your house, actually," Maddie explained. Enjoying having everyone's attention, she added, "It was really creepy. I am never stopping to tie my shoes without telling anyone ever again. Also, it was a little embarrassing. Apparently the Captains went back out to look for me."

Rachel shrugged. "My old town had a marked cross country course. It's not your fault they haven't made one here."

"Yeah, why is that?" Maddie asked. "This town is so new and missing so many random things that sometimes I feel like it just appeared out of thin air. I mean, the high school is new, the middle school is new, even the park is new. We don't have a real football or soccer field, and when we run meets against other teams, they've never even heard of us."

Sabrina grimaced as she was accosted with a vivid mental image of Daphne and the coven literally conjuring the middle school out of thin air. She remembered that day, it had been their last day in Ferryport Landing before moving to the city.

Arianna was nodding. "I feel like I don't know anything about what this place used to look like. I don't think I even know anyone our age who's lived here for more than like, two years. Do you guys?"

Maddie and Rachel shook their heads. Sabrina took a hasty gulp of tea to avoid responding and then choked and spluttered when it burned her mouth.

"Wait, didn't Puck live here with your grandmother before he moved with your uncle to Philly?" Maddie asked.

Sabrina reached over and took another piece of Maddie's muffin to avoid responding as she tried frantically to remember Puck's cover story.

"Yes, but not for long," she said after taking as much time as possible to chew.

"Wait, is Puck your cousin or your brother?" Rachel asked.

Sabrina's eyes widened in horror. "Puck is _not_ my brother. We aren't cousins, either. My uncle adopted him."

"But you live in the same house?"

"Yes, it's my grandmother's house," Sabrina said tiredly. She'd been over this with several people in the past two months.

"So it's Puck and your uncle, your grandmother, and you and Daphne and your parents?" Rachel asked.

"And also these two kids that my grandmother started fostering last week. And my little brother, and also my grandmother's…brother," she finished awkwardly, and fought the urge to cringe. They'd been calling Tobias Granny's brother to simplify things, but in reality it made their whole household dynamic seem much weirder. She realized that lying about why there were so many people in the Grimm household only made them sound stranger than telling the truth would, but of course they couldn't tell the truth.

"Do you all have your own rooms?" Arianna asked. "Your house doesn't look that big from the outside."

"Yeah, we do," Sabrina replied, trying to sound nonchalant. "It's, uh, bigger than it looks."

If only they knew.

"Your grandma must really love kids, huh?" Rachel joked. Sensing Sabrina was uncomfortable, she pulled out her laptop and opened it. "I'm going to look for information on Ferryport Landing's old cross country teams."

As her friends searched, Sabrina found herself both awed and impressed at Morgan and Mordred's ability to wipe things from the internet, although made a mental note to bring up local suspicions at the next Council meeting. Someone, maybe Goldilocks, was going to have to be much more careful about these sorts of things. Goldi wasn't exactly athletically inclined, so it didn't shock Sabrina that she'd neglected the high school sports when she was building the town.

While they searched, Sabrina kept thinking about the campsite in the woods. The more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt—no human would do something like that. Finally, around five, Sabrina checked her phone and declared that her mom was telling her and Puck to come home for dinner. She said goodbye to her friends and went over to where Puck was hanging out with a bunch of guys.

"We have to go home," Sabrina said.

Puck frowned. "Really? It's only five."

"Hey, Sabrina," said Josh, a boy on the soccer team who had never talked to her before, as Puck began to pack up. "How's it going?"

Sabrina gave him a wary smile. "Good."

"You've known Puck for a while, right?" Josh asked. The entire table had fallen silent and was now watching them. "Has he always been this smelly?"

Sabrina let out a genuine laugh. "Honestly, he used to smell worse."

"I came from karate!" Puck yelled as the boys roared with laughter.

Sabrina was still smiling as she and Puck left Sacred Grounds.

"I hate you," said Puck, crossing his arms as they walked toward the edge of the town center.

"I know," Sabrina said happily. "Oh, we can't go straight home. We have to investigate something."

"What?" Puck asked, forgetting to be mad at her. "Did the Council finally give us a job?"

"No, and we're not going to tell them about this. At least not yet," Sabrina said, and then explained quickly about what Maddie had found in the woods. "I think we should go check out the scene. See if there are any clues."

"Because if we told them, they'd delegate it to someone else," Puck said. "A 'real adult,' or so they say."

"Exactly. It's not like we haven't been training!"

So far, Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck's jobs in the Council seemed next-to nonexistent. Sabrina was starting to think the only reason they'd been included was that so the adults could use the Grimm household as a meeting place without having to sneak around them. Robin Hood had given them a few simple tasks, enough to keep the three of them busy, but Sabrina was starting to wonder if the real goal of the tasks was to keep them out of the way. They did spend a lot of time out of the house, after all, taking private defense lessons with Snow White and training in the police department under Hamstead, and they had yet to get an actual case to handle.

They left the the town center and traipsed through the woods for a while. Once they decided they were far enough away from the businesses and human houses, Puck grabbed her and they flew beneath the tree line towards the school.

Flying beneath the canopy was something he'd never been good at due to his wingspan, but now, with all the humans around, it was necessary. It was even harder with a passenger, because Puck couldn't just hold Sabrina's hand and let her dangle like he used to, even though it would have been fun to watch her hit the tree trunks. He had to actually hold onto her, and Puck found it much more difficult to make the sharp turns necessary to avoid the tree trunks with the extra weight.

But it was still faster than walking, and they managed to pass the school and locate the site Maddie had been talking about before the sun set completely, and before Puck could slam them headfirst into an oak.

Puck went over to investigate the fire pit. He dropped to his knees and began to sift through the gray and black heaps of ash, picking up pieces of charcoal and crumbling them between his fingers. There was nothing usual in the fire pit. He turned around and saw Sabrina searching the ground using the flashlight on her phone.

Just as he was trying to think of the right taunt to use, she gasped and bent down to pick something up.

"What on earth?" she muttered, and then held the thing out. "Puck, look."

He turned on his phone light as well and saw in her hand another piece of torn fabric.

"It's squishy," said Sabrina. "Like a piece of a blanket or something."

"It's not bloody like that other one," Puck added, taking it from her. "But it's also torn."

"Do you still have the other piece?" Sabrina asked.

"No, I lost it," Puck said sullenly. "I couldn't really tell the color underneath all the blood. I don't know, it might be a coincidence, but isn't it weird that this site is pretty close to where we found the other piece?"

"Yeah, it is kinda funny," Sabrina agreed, and then realized how dark it was. "You know, but if it is from the same person, or thing, and we just found another piece nearby two months later…."

They drew closer together and looked around at the silent forest.

"We should go home," Sabrina said, taking the piece of fabric back from Puck and zipping it in her jacket pocket.

"What are you, scared?" Puck replied, mentally giving himself a five out of ten for the taunt.

Sabrina bristled. "No! We can stay out here longer and keep looking for clues, if you want."

As she said it, she swung her phone around in a circle to illuminate the empty woods surrounding them.

"I am kind of hungry, though," Puck admitted, glancing at the sky. "And it's dark enough to fly above the forest."

"The adults are probably wondering where we are," Sabrina added.

Sabrina swung the light around again, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

"I guess we should go," Puck agreed. "But it's not because I'm scared."

"I'm not scared either!"

"Good, so we agree. Neither one of us is scared," said Puck. "Do you have the clue?"

"In my pocket."

They took off again, relieved that they were leaving and relieved that they could fly above the treetops again.

* * *

Sabrina opened her eyes and froze.

Something was wrong…something was different about her room. Slowly, she sat up in bed, hugging the covers to her chest as she looked around, trying to figure out what was off.

And then it hit her groggy brain like a ton of bricks. Her room was _pink._ Gone were her pretty sky-blue walls. Instead, the walls and ceiling were a nauseating, Pepto-Bismol shade of pink. Her comforter and the rugs on the ground, once white, were now the color of cotton candy.

"Puck!" she yelled, knowing full well he would hear her through the wall they shared. Growling, she threw her covers aside and launched herself out of bed, only to discover that her pajamas had been turned pink as well.

"You have got to be kidding me," Sabrina hissed, sliding open her closet door, already knowing what she would find.

Every article of clothing she owned was Barbie pink.

"Puck!" she screeched, and her door flew open.

"You called?" her irritating housemate asked, unable to mask his smirk.

"How did you even do this?" In two steps, she closed the distance between them and shoved him hard.

"What?" he asked, openly laughing now. "I heard pink is the new black. All the little girls are wearing it. Just trying to help develop your fashion sense, Grimm."

"I'll kill you, Fairy Boy," Sabrina vowed, pushing him aside and marching directly across the hall, into the room Red and Daphne shared. Daphne was braiding her hair in the mirror and looked up when Sabrina entered.

"What's with all the yelling?"

"Come here," Sabrina snapped. "Bring the Cinderella-fairy-godmother-wand thing."

Daphne knew better than to ask questions. She grabbed the wand from the drawer in her bedside table and followed Sabrina across the hall. When they re-entered Sabrina's room, Daphne let out an audible snort.

"Wow Sabrina, this is really, really, pretty," Daphne said sarcastically. She noticed Puck, who'd set up camp in the bay window, and sighed. "Oh, boy. Okay."

She waved the wand in a wide arc and the pink dye melted away and seemed to evaporate into thin air, leaving the original colors of Sabrina's belongings intact.

"Thank you," Sabrina sighed as her sister left. "Puck, get out of my room. And don't come in here in the middle of the night!"

Puck's wings popped out and he leapt off the window seat, landing gracefully in the doorway. "Oh, I was never in here."

Sabrina's temper boiled over. Puck had been pranking her regularly for the past two months. His antics had ranged from flooding her locker and drenching all of her textbooks to cracking the seat of her chair at the dining room table so that when she sat down on it, it broke and she fell. He'd put glue in her shampoo on the morning of picture day and had replaced the ham on her sandwich with baloney, which Sabrina hated, earlier this past week.

Her fist shot out and would have connected with his temple, but he caught it with lightning speed and twisted her wrist. Then they were fighting in the hallway, punching and ducking with the expertise of two people who had been training under Snow White for the past few weeks. They were more than an even match for each other, equally vicious on the offense and too fast on the defense to be hit, and so their silent fight carried on until Sabrina's knee finally connected with Puck's side and he let out an audible grunt.

Daphne stuck her head into the hallway. "Ugh, you guys! Stop fighting and get ready for school! We're going to be late!"

The two teenagers glared at each other. Rolling her eyes, Daphne emerged from the hallway with one braid done and grabbed Puck's arm. She pulled him all the way to his doorway, which she threw him through and slammed.

"Go brush your teeth," Daphne ordered Sabrina, pointing down the hall toward the bathroom.

"But—"

"Go!"

Sabrina huffed and did as she was told, still seething. Part of the problem with having everyone in the house at the same time was that she wasn't sure which adult to go to when Puck was making her mad. Her parents didn't really have any control over him, and while Granny could order him around, he seemed to take what Uncle Jake said to heart better, but Uncle Jake wasn't very good at discipline.

She slammed the bathroom door behind her, inspected her toothbrush and toothpaste for anything that looked abnormal, and then brushed her teeth. This was how she had to live now—analyzing every move she made, inspecting every object before she touched it. She was going insane.

Sabrina knew she had to find a way to get him back. She was fourteen, after all. She should be just as capable as he was at making his life miserable.

Uncle Jake rapped his knuckles on the door. "Can I come brush my teeth?"

"Yup!" Sabrina yelled, struck with inspiration.

He came in and grabbed the toothpaste.

"Uncle Jake," began Sabrina.

"'Sup?"

"What—uh, is there anything that really freaks Puck out?" Sabrina asked around her toothbrush. "You know, like spiders? Or the dark?"

Uncle Jake thought as he brushed. "Well, loves spiders, and the dark, but he's not a huge fan of pineapples."

Sabrina paused, unsure she had heard correctly. "Pineapple? The fruit?"

"Yeah, one time in Costa Rica it was all we had to eat for breakfast and he refused to. He went hungry that morning."

Sabrina blinked. "Puck went _hungry_?"

Uncle Jake nodded. "I was as surprised as you are."

"Okay, is there anything else? Something that's maybe not a fruit? Does he still not understand indoor plumbing?" Sabrina finished brushing and rinsed off her toothbrush.

There was another knock on the door.

"Can we come brush Basil's teeth?" Veronica asked.

"It's open!" Jake replied. To Sabrina, he added, "No, he's fine with toilets now. He doesn't like really perfume-y soaps. Like, he'll clean himself now but I have to buy him the unscented stuff. Wait, why do you ask?"

"BASIL!" yelled Basil, and karate-kicked the door open, effectively ending Sabrina and Jake's conversation. The four-year-old ran into the room, climbed onto the toilet lid and began to balance on one foot while Veronica squeezed in at the sink.

"Thanks, Uncle Jake. You've been a real help," Sabrina said, patting him on the shoulder and turning to say good morning to her mom and brother before he could ask her anything else.

Later that day, Sabrina sat next to Rachel in Western Civilization, doodling on the front of her notebook while Mr. Terazzi droned on and on about the Roman empire. There had been many times in Sabrina's K-12 career that she had absently doodled on paper—now was not one of them. Currently, she was stressfully doodling, with her eyes were glued on the back of Puck's head.

Puck sat in the front of the room, back straight, paying rapt attention to the teacher. Sabrina could tell that a whole slew of comments were on the tip of his tongue, no doubt about what life was _really_ like in the Roman empire, and as her pink pen traced endless spirals, she tried desperately to think of what she could yell to draw attention away from him when the inevitable happened.

It was a relief when the bell rang and everyone began to pack their bags, barely listening to Mr. Terazzi remind them of their homework due Wednesday.

"Hey, Sabrina," Rachel said, waving her hand to get her friend's attention. "I'm having some friends over Saturday night. Do you wanna come?"

Sabrina drew her eyes away from Puck, who had approached the teacher, with some difficulty. "Yeah, that sounds great. I'll ask my mom!"

"Okay!" Rachel grinned, and as they stood up, leaned closer to whisper in Sabrina's ear. "Who have you been staring at this entire period?"

"No one," Sabrina said, forcing a laugh. "Just the board."

"Oh, please, you weren't copying anything down." Rachel narrowed her eyes and scanned the room. "Is it Josh?"

They both looked at the sandy-haired boy who was gathering his things alongside three other members of the soccer team.

"No," Sabrina said, reddening because of course, there was no way to actually explain why she'd been watching Puck so intently.

"I heard he likes you, you know," Rachel said in a low, conspirational voice, tapping a finger against her bottom lip.

"Really?" Sabrina asked, watching Josh leave the classroom, unsure what to do with that information. "Who told you that?"

Before Rachel could answer, Puck bounced over to join them as they left the room.

"Can you _believe_ what Mr. Terazzi said about Emperor Nero? People didn't like him because he played the lyre while Rome burned and because of that they think _he_ started the fire? Of course it wasn't him! It was—"

Sabrina cleared her throat pointedly and Puck finally looked past her and noticed Rachel.

"It was Mr. Terazzi himself?" Puck continued at a weak attempt of a joke as they left the classroom and joined the throng of students in the hallway.

"Are you really passionate about the Roman Empire, Puck?" Rachel asked, a smile curving across her face.

"Oh, yeah. It's way better than…all of the other empires," Puck guessed, and Sabrina almost didn't have enough willpower to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

Rachel, thankfully, giggled. "See you at lunch, Sabrina. Bye, Puck."

"Bye, Rache," Sabrina replied as her friend turned to go into her next class, and then elbowed Puck in the ribs.

"What?" Puck hissed. "I saved it."

Scowling, Sabrina lowered her voice. "What were you talking to Mr. Terazzi about after class?"

Puck turned red and Sabrina feared she would have to use the sandwich baggie of Forgetful Dust she'd been carrying around all school year.

"I, uh, asked him how he knew so much about Rome."

"And?"

"He told me I should be reading my textbook."

Sabrina laughed. They turned the corner into the science hallway and she muttered under her breath, "So who did start the fire? Please tell me it wasn't you."

"Of course it wasn't me, I hadn't been to Rome before Jake and I went. But it was a fairy. One of Oberon's brothers and a few accomplices, we think."

"Why?" Sabrina asked, interested in something Puck had to say for the first time in a long time.

Puck looked uncomfortable and dropped his voice to a whisper as they sat down at their lab bench in their Earth Science classroom. The teacher had assigned seats alphabetically at the beginning of the school year, which mean that Goodfellow and Grimm were lab partners.

"There were a couple of us—them—who believed that the human civilization of Rome was getting too powerful. They were afraid humans would take over the world and Faerie would have to go into hiding. So they started a fire, knowing that the human civilization wasn't advanced enough to fight it. Rightfully so, as it turns out, but it was pretty messed up."

"Tons of people died," Sabrina said, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. "That wasn't right."

Puck was uncharacteristically solemn. "I know. It was awful. Mother and Father were so angry, but it took them a while to figure out who was responsible. They tried to help the Romans rebuild, but it was too late. Oberon's brothers manipulated the barbarians and helped them attack Rome. That's the true reason that Rome fell, Faerie meddling, although the stuff about the lead pipes and government and whatever certainly didn't do them any favors."

Sabrina's stomach clenched. "What happened to them? The ones who started the fire and killed all those people."

"Good morning, class!" Mrs. Raleigh said from the front of the room, clasping her hands and waiting for silence.

"Father banished them. I haven't seen them since the fall of Rome."

"Really?" Sabrina pressed. "As humans spread all around the globe, they didn't do anything?"

"Well, yeah, they were banished to the Far North, which is in the Arctic circle," Puck repeated in a voice that suggested Sabrina was too stupid to understand what he was saying. "I mean, they're banished and their powers are weakened as long as Faerie remains strong. Until Faerie falls, I guess."

"Do you think there's a chance they're working with the Hand?"

Puck's eyebrows scrunched and he shook his head, lowering his voice again so that Sabrina could barely hear him. "Probably not. They didn't really care for any beings that weren't Fae."

"Bench five, your attention!" Mrs. Raleigh said. Sabrina and Puck jumped and sat up. Mrs. Raleigh eyed them for another moment and then turned to the board to begin the lesson.

Sabrina looked at Puck, belated adrenaline churning in her veins.

"Are you sure?" she mouthed, unconvinced.

Puck's narrowed eyes slid sideways, and he whispered, "The truth is that only a small amount of the remaining Fae live in New York. We're everywhere, on every continent. I don't know anything about their relationships with each other."

"Does the Council know about this?"

The Council of Everafter had hosted just two meetings after the primary one. Everyone initially invited had agreed to join the cause, so Robin Hood was more free with what he spoke about. He had a couple of spies set up around the globe who were sending in reports of Everafter disturbances. Morgan and Mordred had been tasked with the duty of following up on those disturbances to see if they were caused by the Ferryport Landing Everafters. She knew that there had been problems in Asia and Russia, possibly north enough to be in the Arctic circle, and wondered for the first time if the Ferryport Everafters were their only problem. What repercussions had the fall of the barrier caused elsewhere?

"I have no idea," Puck said sourly. "It's never crossed my mind before, and it's not like they want our help with this."

Most information, like Veronica had warned, was still on a strict need-to-know basis, and as Sabrina, Puck, and Daphne had quickly learned, there was a lot of information they didn't need to know. Sabrina and Puck had heard voices in Mirror's old room and gone in to investigate several times, only to be shooed away by the founding members of the Council in the middle of a Founders meeting, surrounded by many maps and documents.

"Are Morgan and Mordred only investigating disturbances if they're caused by Ferryport Landing people?" Sabrina asked.

"Miss Grimm! Mr. Goodfellow! Do you want detention?" Mrs. Raleigh barked, and Sabrina and Puck jumped and then shrank in their seats as everyone in the room turned to look at them. Sabrina pulled her notebook toward her and didn't look at Puck again while the teacher lectured, although for the second time today, she was too distracted by her thoughts to focus on school.

Mrs. Raleigh was passing out lab directions. When she handed Sabrina the set for their lab bench, she gave Sabrina and Puck a dirty look again. Sabrina drew back, alarmed, and placed the piece of paper between them.

As she scanned the materials section, she muttered, "Do we know her status?"

"Human," Puck muttered. "The only teachers who aren't are a physics teacher and one of the orchestra teachers."

"Today we are calculating density!" Mrs. Raleigh said, returning to her desk at the front of the room. "All of the materials are on the left side of the room. Your final report is due Monday."

After a quick glance at the sheet of paper, Puck declared, "I'll go get the fire."

"Puck, we don't need fire for this! Can you even read?"

Puck deflated in his seat. "Science labs without fire are _boring._ "

Sabrina shook her head in disbelief as she went to get the supplies. The first week of school, they'd burned Cheetos in lab, and it had arguably been the greatest day of Puck's whole life. Every single lab after that he'd insisted on using the Bunsen burner and flint, actually pulling them out and lighting the burner a few times before Mrs. Raleigh or Sabrina noticed and stopped him.

Perhaps that was why Mrs. Raleigh didn't like them, Sabrina thought suddenly, dumping a bunch of things onto the lab bench.

They got to work. About four seconds after they began the experiment, Puck lost focus and pulled out his phone underneath the table.

Sabrina rolled her eyes and snapped, "Help me, Gasbag."

"You know, if you keep rolling your eyes as much as you do, they're going to get stuck like that, Snotface," Puck said nonchalantly.

"You're the reason I roll my eyes, like, 90% of the time," Sabrina said. "If you don't help me do this lab I'm going to tell your chimps where you hide your chocolate."

Puck pointed an accusing finger at Sabrina. "How do you know where that is?"

"Not telling," Sabrina replied, deadpan.

"Daphne told you," Puck said, narrowing his eyes. "Or maybe Jake."

" _Not telling,_ " Sabrina repeated, holding out a graduated cylinder. "Now go put 100 milliliters of water in this before I strangle you."

"I'd like to see you try," he said, but when she didn't relent, he let out a low growl and snatched the cylinder from her before stalking off to the sink.

Sabrina spent the rest of the day oscillating between thinking about how to convince the adults to let her do more in the Council and how to get Puck back for this morning's prank. By the time they got home, she'd figured out the solution to one of her problems. Abandoning Puck in the living room to watch cartoons, she sidled into the kitchen and started going through the cabinets. No one else was home, and although Sabrina wondered where they all were, she was glad no one was around to ask what she was doing.

Armed with vanilla extract and maple syrup, Sabrina snuck upstairs. In Daphne and Red's room, she located a bottle of Red's bubblegum-scented perfume. Then she shut herself in the bathroom and pulled Puck's combination shampoo and body wash out of the shower. It was almost empty and, like Uncle Jake had said, unscented, and she quickly unscrewed the cap and got to work mixing in the other products she'd brought. Then she raided the cabinets and added some of Uncle Jake's hair gel, a few drops of Veronica's tea tree oil, and some of the scented hand soap. She capped it, shook it, and smelled it, wrinkling her nose. It certainly had a smell now, and one that, like Sabrina had hoped, was not pleasant. It was sweet to the point of pungent.

She was looking around for something else to add when there was a loud knock on the door.

"I'm in here!" Sabrina yelled.

"I have an idea!" Puck yelled back. "What are you doing in there?"

"What kind of question is that?" Sabrina quickly put his shampoo back where it had come from and shoved everything else into the cabinet underneath the sink. Then she threw the door open.

"Aren't you going to wash your hands?" Puck asked.

Sabrina blinked, trying to figure out if he was kidding, and then retreated to the sink.

"What's your idea?" she repeated as she scrubbed.

He waited impatiently, tapping his foot against the ground, and then led the way down the hallway, stopping outside Mirror's room.

"We go in there and look through all of the documents they've gathered," Puck said.

"Why?"

"We should figure out if they know about that site we found the other day. We've gotta figure out what to do about that piece of fabric," Puck reasoned, stopping outside Mirror's door. "But first we have to figure out how to get into the room."

"Step aside, Stinkpot," said Sabrina, pulling a bobby pin out of her hair. She went to work on the lock while Puck watched in interest.

Sabrina's heart leapt as there was a click and the knob twisted in her hand. Puck punched the air, and then, downstairs, they heard the front door open.

"Hello?" Granny yelled. "Is anyone home yet?"

Sabrina and Puck shared a panicked look, and then Puck pushed Sabrina into the room and shut and locked the door behind him.

Once they were inside, a vile wave of nausea rose in Sabrina's stomach. She hadn't been in this room since the war, she hadn't even let herself think about the contents of the room since the war, and now it was all coming back to her. From watching her parents lie unconscious in bed to sneaking in in the middle of the night to have deep conversations with Mirror, to the time she'd spent in the Hall of Wonders, there were a lot of bad memories here.

"Gasbag," Puck said, snapping his fingers in her face. "Come on, we don't have much time."

Sabrina blinked and then waved him off, trying to see the room as it now was. There was a long conference-style table in the middle with several manila folders strewn across the top. On the far side, there was a large gray filing cabinet that Sabrina figured was locked, and the walls were covered in whiteboards, which were covered in writing. Sabrina thought it ironic that the room that once housed the most powerful mirror in the world was now covered in opaque surfaces.

Puck began to flip through the manila folders while Sabrina walked around the room, skimming the writing on the boards. Most of it was tiny and cramped and hard to make sense of, but a list written in blue marker caught her eye.

 _STATUS OF EVERAFTERS TRAPPED IN CASTLE DURING WAR_

 _Shere Khan—?_

 _Beast & Natalie Beast—NYC; Mordred confirmed_

 _Ice Queen—NYC; ? no confirmation_

 _Jack Pumpkinhead—NYC; Mordred confirmed_

 _Humpty Dumpty—Maine; Morgan confirmed_

 _Baloo—NYC; Mordred confirmed_

 _Mowgli—South Africa; Morgan confirmed_

 _Glass Cat—NYC; ? no confirmation_

 _The Patchwork Girl—?_

Sabrina stopped reading partway down the list and did a double take.

"All of these folders have the same things in them," Puck said, disgruntled. "They're all just blueprints of the town."

"Hey," Sabrina said, waving him over. "What are the odds the fabric we found came from a quilt?"

"I don't know," Puck replied, walking over to join her. "Why?"

"They haven't been able to find the Patchwork Girl of Oz," Sabrina said, pointing to her name on the list. "She was a part of the Scarlet Hand."

 **A/N.**

 **Happy New Year! I hope everyone else who's currently snowed in by this Bomb Cyclone is staying safe and warm. Thank you all for reading this chapter and for all the kind reviews on Chapter 1!**

 **This chapter is what I imagine Puck and Sabrina's relationship would be like at this time—pranking each other and fighting half the time, and relying on each other the other half.**

 **For those of you who read Tales from the Tundra, I'm using a similar structure of Faerie in this story. So the Everafter community in the Far North (Russian tundra) that I created exists in this story too. We'll get into it more later.**

 **If you enjoyed this chapter (or didn't!) please leave a review!**

 **Guest review (Guest 12/30/17): I'm so happy that you liked the beginning of the plot! Thanks for following TFT and I hope you like the rest of this story too! :)**


	3. This is War!

Sabrina fumbled with the piece of fabric she'd been carrying around and pulled it out. "Do you think this could have come from the Patchwork Girl?"

Puck snatched it from her and inspected it. Tiny pink flowers dotted the blue fabric, and white threads dangled from the jagged edge where the material had caught on a bush and ripped. "Well, that depends. What does the Patchwork Girl look like?"

"No clue. There's probably something in one of the journals?"

Puck shook his head in disbelief as they started walking towards the door. "Snow would be so disappointed if she knew we didn't do our research before going out to collect evidence."

Sabrina reached for the handle, but as she did, there was a scraping of a key in the lock. Both teenagers jumped back as the door opened and Granny and Veronica entered, the latter trailing off mid sentence when she realized they had company.

Granny stared at the teenagers for a moment as if she wasn't sure what to make of them, and then crossed the threshold and snapped, "What are you two doing in here?"

Sabrina shoved the piece of quilt in her pocket as Puck replied, "Just looking around."

Granny crossed her arms, a signature Grimm scowl creeping across her face. " _Lieblings,_ we told you this room was off limits. How did you even get in?"

Sabrina flushed, but before she could answer, Snow White followed the others into the room and spoke up. "I think one's on me. I probably shouldn't've taught Sabrina how to pick locks."

Sabrina gave her grandmother a sheepish smile, but Granny did not soften.

"There's a reason we keep this door locked," said Granny, sounding as cold as woman who routinely wore large sunflowers on her hat could sound. "It is an invasion of privacy to break and enter."

"But, Granny—" Sabrina began, and then turned to her mother, who was frowning. "Mom, we're sick of not knowing what's going on! There are people in and out of this room at all hours of the day and night, and yet you won't tell us anything about what the Council is doing, even though we're supposed to be in it!"

"Have you ever considered that there might be a reason for that?" Veronica asked, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Sabrina, I understand that you want to help, and I understand that you like to snoop, but some of the stuff we're dealing with is really very dangerous."

Puck and Sabrina glanced at each other. Puck nodded his agreement to her silent plan, and Sabrina pulled the piece of quilt back out of her pocket and held it up.

"We know. We found this."

All three women squinted at the thing Sabrina was holding, and then Sabrina watched their eyes flick one-by-one to the list on the board behind her, making the same connection she had.

"Where did you find that?" Snow White asked in a deadly calm voice.

Sabrina relayed the story of Maddie getting lost and Puck and Sabrina going to check out the spot she'd found.

Veronica's frown deepened. "You two went into the woods alone? Without telling anyone? At sundown?"

Sabrina looked at Puck for help, surprised that Veronica had chosen that piece of the story to focus on rather than the issue at hand.

Puck caught her eye and replied warily, "Yes. But look at what we found. We think it ripped off the Patchwork Girl, and you guys don't know where she is. So that means she could be in Ferryport Landing, maybe even recruiting for the Scarlet Hand!"

"You can't go into the woods alone after dark. It isn't safe," Veronica admonished, completely ignoring Puck's claim about the Scarlet Hand.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention, kids," Granny continued. "If you would just hand over the piece of fabric, we'll investigate. You don't have to worry about it anymore."

Puck's fingers curled over the fabric. "We want to help."

"Yeah," Sabrina agreed. "We should be involved! We're on the Council! We're the ones who ended the war!"

Veronica stared at her as if she had never quite seen her before. She began to say something and then hesitated, turning to Snow for help.

"You have to tell them, Ronnie," Snow said. "They're at that age."

Sabrina considered taking verbal offense to this, but held her breath, hoping that they would finally get to learn what was going on. Puck watched a silent conversation that he didn't understand occur between the three adults, and then claimed the chair opposite Veronica, hoping that this move would convince them that he wasn't leaving.

Veronica dropped her head into her hands with a groan, her fingers curling into her dark hair. "Is the door locked?"

"Yes," replied Granny, seating herself at the head of the table. "Go, on, Veronica. Tell her."

Veronica raised her head and looked Sabrina dead in the eye. "Sabrina, we haven't let you help more because you're in more danger than you realize."

Sabrina's heart started to pound. "What?"

Veronica looked to Snow again for reassurance, and Snow nodded.

"Sit," Snow White commanded, and Sabrina, the last one standing, sank down next to Puck.

"Sabrina, you cannot tell Daphne what I'm about to tell you. None of it. Nothing you learn in this room must leave it," Veronica said. "We understand why you two want to help. You're in high school now, you're older, at some point you must learn what's really going on."

"Wait…we can't involve Daphne?" Sabrina asked slowly. "But Daphne and I are a team."

Even though she was so focused on arguing she could not help but notice that her mother looked older and more tired than she remembered.

"Remember what you and I talked about, when we moved back to the city? About how after your father and I disappeared, you had to grow up so that Daphne could stay a child?" Veronica asked.

Sabrina grimaced and did not respond. Remembering their time in foster care was painful and something she tried not to do often.

"I know she'd older now, but she's also only ten. This is a very serious business and I don't want her to get dragged into it," Veronica explained, her voice full of regret for the part of her daughter's lives that she had missed and would never be able to make up for. "We're letting her do lessons with the coven. They're training her slowly, she's having fun. For her, this can still be about fun."

"This goes for Red as well," Granny added.

Sabrina swallowed, her throat tight. She understood what Veronica was saying, perhaps better than Veronica herself. "Okay. I won't tell them."

Veronica looked at Puck expectantly. Puck blinked, somewhat surprised to find he was a part of the conversation as much as Sabrina, and promised, "Neither will I."

"Okay," Veronica affirmed, and steeled herself. "Sabrina, we never told you the real reason we moved back to Ferryport Landing."

"I assumed we moved back because of the Council," Sabrina said slowly, watching the expressions on everyone's faces as she spoke. Suddenly, a chill raced up her spine. "Is that wrong?"

"We could have easily participated from the city. No, the real reason we left was because…well, our family began to receive threatening letters."

Sabrina's heart gave a panicked spasm. "What kind of threats?"

In contrast with her dark hair, Veronica's skin looked oddly pale. "They were anonymous. Dropped in our mailbox, no postage stamps. They mainly threatened you and Daphne. They blamed you for the fall of the Scarlet Hand, the death of the Master, and vowed vengeance."

Her voice shook and she fell silent for a moment.

"We sent the first letter to our contacts in the NYPD forensics department, but they were unable to figure out anything about its source. The second letter arrived a week later and was simply the standard calling card of the Scarlet Hand, the red handprint. We sent the second letter to the coven, but they weren't able to figure out anything that we didn't already know. Henry set up a camera near the mailbox hoping to catch whoever was leaving letters, although by that point we were already debating putting our house on the market. It made us very uncomfortable that this person knew where we all slept."

Goose bumps pricked Sabrina's arms. She crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in her chair.

"The third letter came a week later, this time detailing the very specific route that you, Sabrina, had taken from the apartment to school, the numbers of the classrooms you spent time in, how long you were at swim practice for. I called Hamstead and asked him to set up a 24-7 patrol around our house. And that was the night we started packing."

"That's why we moved before you were able to sell the house," Sabrina said slowly, her skin crawling. "Who was following me?"

"I don't know, dear. I've been trying to figure it out ever since," Veronica said tiredly.

"What the hell?" Puck muttered under his breath.

"Language," reprimanded Granny.

"Why would anyone do something like that?" Puck continued. "If they wanted to hurt you, why wasn't their strategy something more violent?"

"Hey," Sabrina grumbled.

Puck gave her a disdainful look, tapped his temple, and said in an irritatingly condescending voice, "We're supposed to think like the enemy, remember? Right, Snow?"

" _Remember_?" Sabrina mocked in a phony voice.

"Oh, nice comeback."

"Anyways," Veronica cut in before Sabrina could retaliate. "We figured we would all be more secure in a place where there are not only physical locks, but magical protections as well. We haven't received a letter since we've been here, even though I'm sure anyone who wanted to know could easily find out where we went, which makes us think that this was the action of a Scarlet Hand member with the sole purpose of reminding us that the organization is not dead, and not the makings of something more violent."

"This is very difficult," Snow continued. "Last time, we knew the enemy. We knew what the Scarlet Hand was and how they operated, we knew their faces, we knew that they deferred to one Master. Now, we don't know anything."

"So now you know," said Granny grimly. "We've been trying to track down old Scarlet Hand members and keep tabs on them. It hasn't been going very well. Morgan and Mordred are currently in India searching for Everafters."

"Wait," Puck cut in. "Is this the reason Jake and I returned too?"

"Partly, but there's another job Robin Hood might ask you to do. I'm not sure when," Snow said carefully.

"You cannot go running off into the woods again," Veronica said in an effort to redirect the conversation, and when both Puck and Sabrina started to protest, she held up a placating hand. "No one on the Council does anything with a partner, and without notifying at least two other Council members where they are going. This is how we stay safe when the danger that lurks all around us is so unknown."

"We will know if you disappear like that again," Granny warned. "To be truthful, we have been watching you both, as well as the other children, closely. You go to school, where there are several Everafters working as teachers. You train with Snow White. You hang out at the Blue Plate Special, where Farrah watches you, or at Sacred Grounds, where Buzzflower watches you. We knew that you'd disappeared for a few hours. We were planning on asking you about where you'd gone anyways."

"You've been watching us?" Sabrina cried. "That's _such_ an invasion of privacy."

Veronica gave her a look. "I'm sorry if you don't agree with it, Sabrina, but this is how things will be for a while. Until we can get to the bottom of everything, no more sneaking off. No more unsupervised excursions."

"But the Patchwork Girl is probably out there somewhere," Puck protested.

"I want to find the person who was following me," Sabrina said in disgust.

"I understand that you two want responsibilities. And you'll have them. But, just like everyone else, they will be responsibilities that are dictated and controlled by the rest of the Council," Granny said firmly.

Sabrina and Puck let out nearly identical sighs of disbelief.

"Okay, what will our responsibilities be, then?" Sabrina asked, scowling.

"First off, you'll hand over that piece of fabric," Granny ordered, holding out her hand. "We'll have to send it to forensics. Ever since Hamstead and Bess returned, we have a forensics lab in Ferryport Landing, so the results will be quick. As soon as we get the results back we'll let you into the meeting where we review them, okay? Is that fair?"

"Fine," Puck said sulkily. "But what else? We should go back into the woods and look around more."

"No," said Veronica and Snow White in unison.

"Someone else will," Granny added. "For now, you two are banned from going into the woods. You're banned from going anywhere without Council supervision."

"Anywhere?" Sabrina cried. "Does that mean I can't sleep over at Rachel's this weekend? That isn't fair, I thought we were supposed to try and 'lead normal lives while we still can'."

She put vicious air quotes around the last half of the sentence. Granny and Veronica exchanged looks, knowing Sabrina had a point. Fighting the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation, Veronica said, "You can go if Uncle Jake can give you some sort of protective amulet. I believe he has this big green necklace of sorts that you could probably borrow."

Puck snorted while Sabrina bristled.

* * *

Sabrina sat on her bed, typing an essay with one eye on the door. She'd drawn the blinds, now paranoid of this invisible stalker, and was waiting on tenterhooks for Puck to fall into her trap.

Finally, he walked past her door shirtless, which had to mean he was going to shower. Distantly, she heard the bathroom door open and close, counted to a hundred, and then vaulted off the bed and tiptoed down the hallway.

Throughout the night, Sabrina had been adding things to his shampoo bottle, partly because she was trying to distract herself from thinking about what Veronica had told them, and partly because she just kept thinking of them. In addition to several varieties of glue, which she'd added to fix the consistency and balance out all the liquid, she'd found a few more bottles of flowery and fruity scented things in Daphne and Red's room that smelled absolutely atrocious.

While she waited, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, she wondered why she hadn't ever tried to get Puck back when they were younger. She thought back to the countless spiders on her pillow, the glop grenades, the infamous night of the Pegasi, and even the whole slew of attacks she'd endured since he'd returned to Ferryport Landing, and grinned in satisfaction as the fairy boy let out a startled yell. After a few moments of silence, he let out another startled cry, as if he'd tested the shampoo again and been shocked to get the same results.

"JAAAKE!" yelled Puck, and Sabrina, snickering, raced down the hallway on light feet and sidled into her room as Jake came pounding up the stairs.

Jake opened the door without knocking and was greeted by the sight of Puck, wild-eyed, sticking his soapy head out of the shower curtain.

"What's happening?" Jake asked as he shut the door, the mug of tea he'd brought along in case he needed a weapon held threateningly overhead.

"My shampoo has mutated!"

Jake blinked and set the cup down on the counter. "Excuse me?"

"Smell my head!"

Jake obliged and then wrinkled his nose. Puck's hair smelled like a putrid mix of rotten flowers, cheap plastic, and chewed bubblegum. It was also starting to congeal, but Jake was hesitant to say this to Puck, lest he freak him out more. He thought for a moment and then said, "Let me see the bottle."

Puck ducked behind the curtain, keeping up a steady stream of chatter. "I washed my hair, and something started to smell bad, so I figured I hadn't used enough shampoo, but then I added more shampoo and it didn't rinse out, so I added more shampoo again, and now there's just a lot of mutant shampoo in my hair."

The bottle was thrust at Jake from behind the curtain.

"Well," Jake began after unscrewing the cap and inspecting the shampoo. "I don't think your shampoo mutated, but I do think someone tampered with this. They clearly added something smelly. Also, I think they added glue. Your hair is clumping together."

Puck's head returned, murder written across his face. "Grimm did this!"

If it was anyone else, Jake would've asked Puck to clarify which person he was talking about, but anyone would know he meant Sabrina. Thinking back to her questions this morning, Jake winced, figuring Puck was probably correct. He considered telling him that, but based on the boy fairy's track record with pranking, figured he might have had this one coming.

"I don't know, Puck. I can buy you new shampoo tomorrow," Jake said, chucking the bottle in the garbage.

"What do I do?" Puck asked desperately. "I smell awful! And my head is sticky."

Jake remembered when _smelling awful_ and _being sticky_ were two of the primary criteria that Puck required for his day-to-day life. Oh, how puberty could change a person.

"You can try my shampoo if you want, but you honestly might need to ask Sabrina if you can borrow her swimmer's clarifying shampoo to get that glue out," Jake said, fighting a smile as Puck's face grew redder and redder. Although Jake hated seeing Puck upset, he had to hand it to his niece. "I hate to say it, Puck, but I think you've met your match."

Livid, Puck reached past Jake and snatched his towel off the hook.

"I am going to kill her," he declared, emerging from the shower with it wrapped around his waist. Before Jake could say anything, he'd pushed past him and stormed down the hallway.

" _You_ ," Puck hissed once he'd reached Sabrina's doorway.

She looked up from her computer. Although her face was carefully arranged into a look of innocence, he could see the laughter in her eyes.

"What do you want, Snotface?" she asked in a bored voice. "I'm busy."

"I am going to kill you," he repeated, so angry that his brain seemed to have jammed on the phrase. "I know you did this. I smell like the week old corpse of Hello Kitty."

"You always smell like that," Sabrina said, now definitely fighting giggles.

"Give me your clarifying shampoo!"

Sabrina slid off her bed and stalked over to him, only stopping when they were inches apart. Then she crossed her arms and demanded, "Stop pranking me."

Puck's lip curled. "No. Give me your clarifying shampoo!"

"No!"

Puck ground out, " _Why not._ "

"Because you," Sabrina began, poking his bare chest, "deserve _this_ ," she gestured to his head, "for every prank you've pulled on me. So you can deal with it on your own. If you thought I wasn't going to retaliate then you're in for a rude awakening. Stop pranking me."

Puck glared at her. " _Never_."

Sabrina was smirking. She took a threatening step forward, and Puck, so thrown off by this new version of Sabrina that he didn't quite know how to handle it, took one backwards. "This is only the beginning, Goodfellow. I am going to make your life miserable. This is _war._ "

Puck drew himself up to his full height as Sabrina backed him into the hallway. "Stop this at once, give me the clarifying shampoo, or face my wrath!"

Sabrina barked out a laugh. "Good luck getting all that glue out of your hair."

And then she slammed the door in his face.

And so commenced the Freshman Year War. Although not quite as infamous as the night of the Pegasi, it was still a period of time that no one in the Grimm household could ever quite forget.

It seemed to the rest of the family that Sabrina had finally lost it. The past few months of pranking had brought out a side of her that had stayed buried in a dark past dotted with foster families and orphanages. Only Daphne had previously witnessed the consequences of the intense focus and complicated planning she could dedicate to something like this. Puck, on the other hand, was unaccustomed to having an opponent when it came to pranking and stepped up his game accordingly. Neither of them liked to lose, after all.

At five thirty in the morning about a week and a half after the shampoo incident, Sabrina woke to a searing pain in her scalp. She sat up and cried out, grabbing the side of her head as the pain worsened and getting one of the worst shocks of her life when she discovered that her head now started about a foot to the right. It took her several moments of blind, groggy groping to figure out what was going on. When she did, she leapt out of her bed with adrenaline pulsing through her veins and white hot fury in her head.

She was halfway to Puck's door before her brain caught up with her body and she froze, thinking fast. Then, using her hand to support the weight of the basketball that the evil boy fairy had glued to her head, Sabrina took several quiet steps backward and eased into Daphne and Red's room.

Sabrina shook her sister awake. Although Daphne usually fought waking, the moment she opened her eyes she yelped at the sight of Sabrina's silhouette in her dark room and scrambled backwards in bed.

"Sabrina…what happened to your head?"

"It's a basketball," Sabrina hissed through her teeth. "You have to help me get it off."

Daphne groaned, rubbed her eyes viciously, and then opened them again to ensure that Sabrina was still in front of her. Then she grabbed a fistful of wands from her drawer and the sisters tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom so as not to wake Red.

"Have you and Puck ever considered, I don't know, sitting down and talking instead of attacking each other all the time?" Daphne groused after flicking on the light and checking the time on her phone. "Crouch down, let me look at it."

Sabrina decided against responding and knelt on the cold tile.

"He used superglue, I think," Daphne said tiredly after a minute of probing. "I'm trying to think of what I can do that won't also remove your hair."

Sabrina jerked her head away from Daphne reflexively. With a sigh, Daphne grabbed Sabrina by the basketball and pulled her back.

"I have something that should work. Hold still," Daphne said. "You may lose a few strands, but I think that's to be expected, what with the superglue and all."

" _Should_ work, or _will_ work?"

"Sabrina, I didn't ask you to incite Puck's wrath," Daphne said impatiently. "This is way above my pay grade."

 _This is way above my pay grade_ was Daphne's new favorite saying. She'd heard someone use the phrase at a Council meeting and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Usually, Sabrina would snap that she didn't even have a pay grade, but instead she said, "I didn't ask for Puck's wrath, either. He has to learn that he can't pull this crap anymore without retaliation."

Daphne sighed. "Sabrina, he just wants your attention."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sabrina asked, bristling as she waited for Daphne to launch into some speech that would echo the sentiments she'd had after returning from the future about three years ago.

Instead, Daphne shook her head as if she couldn't believe that Sabrina could be so dense. "I just mean that he likes being your friend. I don't really think he's figured out to express that correctly, but you know. We're some of the first real friends that he's ever had. I mean, he can't complain to his guy friends at school about how painful it is when your wings grow or how he can't get a license because he isn't human and doesn't have a birth certificate."

"Friends?" Sabrina asked, unsure of why this word had completely thrown her off. "No, Daph. Friends don't glue basketballs to their friend's heads."

Daphne's silence was disagreement enough. And even though she didn't want to, Sabrina began to think about all the hours they'd spent doing lab reports on Sabrina's bed, playing video games, sitting in Sacred Grounds, trading foods they disliked when Granny packed them for lunch, and beating each other up in Snow's training class. She'd listened to him rant several times about the license thing, and had supplied him with enough Advil in response to the puberty wing pain that Rachel had joked that Puck was getting his period right alongside the girls.

Sabrina received her second terrible shock of the morning. Was Puck…her friend?

But she didn't have much time to dwell on that thought, because Daphne chose a wand and waved it in an arc around the basketball, muttering a stream of words under her breath. Sabrina felt a sudden lightness and heard the basketball hit the ground. She gasped in relief and her hand flew up to touch her hair, which was sticky, but all there.

"Thanks, Daphne, you're absolutely amazing," Sabrina said, getting off the cold ground with some difficultly.

Daphne's cheeks tinged pink. "I do what I can. Do you have to retaliate? Can't you just listen to what I said and move on?"

"Daphne, I have to win this or he'll never stop," Sabrina said, even though this was absolutely exhausting in every way, and she wanted for it to end more than anything.

"Well, then why don't you look for a way to end it?" Daphne suggested, and then, seeing Sabrina's face, amended, "Win but also end it."

A few hours later, Sabrina came down the stairs to breakfast. Puck had been eating Eggos impatiently, waiting in anticipation to hear her yell from upstairs, so when she appeared in the dining room, perfectly calm and basketball-free, he was so dumbfounded that he dropped his waffle.

"Good morning, everyone," Sabrina said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Puck realized he was staring at her open-mouthed and struggled to close it and chew properly. He thought back to the night before. Had he given his pixies the correct instructions? Was someone else going to come downstairs with a basketball glued to to their head?

Puck narrowed his eyes. No, his pixies were smarter than that.

"Good morning, Sabrina," Puck said formally. "How did you sleep?"

"Very well, thank you for asking," Sabrina said in an equally polite manner. It would have been almost believable if the two had not been glaring at each other.

At the head of the table, Jake set down his coffee cup. He and Veronica made eye contact and he saw the same suspicion he felt written across her face. Not only was this abnormal behavior for them, but since they'd spent the last week locked in an incredibly harsh and incredibly irritating prank war, the exchange did not bode well for anyone at the table. Jake slid his plate off his placemat in case he had to use the mat to shield himself.

Puck was dumbfounded, but he wasn't surprised. If there was one thing he'd learned in the past week, it was that when Sabrina was not preoccupied with worry about comatose parents, the Scarlet Hand, and general world-saving, she was not only vicious but much cleverer than him (not that he would ever admit it to anyone). After the shampoo bottle incident, she'd synched everyone's Bluetooth speakers to each other and to her phone, hidden them in various locations in Puck's room, and blasted Taylor Swift albums for three whole hours while Puck searched desperately for them all, smashing trees in his room as he went. He'd gone immediately to her room armed with glop grenades, but when he threw them, intending to coat the walls in all manners of disgusting materials, _glitter_ exploded out of them. How Sabrina had managed to replace his glop grenades, Puck had no idea, but it had frightened him. He'd finally gotten the better of her a day later, when she tried to sneak into his room again and he'd enlisted his chimps to throw poop at her. Then, she'd left for the weekend to stay over at Rachel's house, giving Puck plenty of time to move all of her furniture to the roof. In retaliation she'd thrown all of his white socks in the washing machine with an old tube of lipstick. Try as he might to disguise them, so many people had asked him why he was wearing pink socks that he thought he was going to scream.

Prank after prank consumed them, each more vicious than the last. Now it was Thursday. Every day so far this week, Sabrina had replaced a different part of Puck's lunch with a bag of sliced pineapple, Puck's least favorite food in the entire world. Today, he was prepared for the pineapple attack, but he was also getting tired. He was beginning to regret engaging her in battle, but it was far too late to back out now—Puck was in too deep.

By the time lunch rolled around, Puck was exhausted and hungry. He hadn't eaten as much breakfast as he usually did after the whole disappearing-basketball-thing. In addition, being constantly on edge, waiting for Sabrina to attempt to prank him again while also trying to prank her was costing him hours of sleep. To add to the stress, his second period French teacher had closed all the blinds and turned on a movie, and for some reason had gotten mad at him when he'd promptly fallen asleep. When he'd complained that she'd woken him in the middle of a REM cycle and tried to explain that now he was going to be tired all day, she'd threatened to send him to the principal's office unless he sat up and started taking notes.

So when he opened his lunchbox—that he had checked, not only when they were leaving the house in the morning, but again when he'd put it into his locker before homeroom—he was absolutely floored. Everything he'd packed for himself had been replaced with sandwich baggies full of sliced pineapple.

 _Pineapple._

Puck stared at the bags, his stomach twisting in horror. His blood began to boil. He rose in his seat, ignoring the questions and funny looks from his friends, all of his focus dedicated to the round table across the cafeteria where Sabrina sat, surrounded by empty chairs while her friends bought lunch.

He stormed across the lunch room and slammed his bag down in front of her.

"What did you do with my food?" he demanded, his stomach growling so loudly that he was sure she could hear it.

Sabrina smirked. "Puck, Granny told you to pack your own lunch. It's not my fault if you forgot."

Puck raked a hand through his hair, wild-eyed. "Stop playing games, Grimm. I've had it with your pranks. This has got to end."

Suddenly Sabrina was standing too, leaning on the table between them. "Then let's end it."

Disarmed, Puck faltered and was unable to remain on offense. "What?"

"We declare a truce. Tell me that you're done pranking me, I'll tell you that I'm done pranking you, and then I'll give you your food back."

Puck's mouth opened and closed mutely as he weighed his options—no more pranks, or _no lunch_. He stared at Sabrina, who was watching him with her blue eyes narrowed, her glue-free hair thrown up in a careless braid, her nose scrunched so that the tiny freckles that dotted her cheeks seemed much more prominent, and realized with growing horror that Jake was right.

He had met his match.

 _Never,_ in four thousand whole years, had Puck encountered this. No one in Faerie had stooped to his level, while everyone in Ferryport Landing had been too terrified of him to retaliate.

He ground his teeth and then let out a low growl. "Fine. No more pranks."

His chest contracted when he said it, unable to believe that she'd outwitted him in the end.

"Fine," Sabrina snapped, feeling belated buzzes of adrenaline course through her veins. She reached into her backpack, pulled out a paper bag, and held it out. They glared at each other for a long moment, and then Puck snatched his lunch away from her and stormed back to his table.

Sabrina sat back down, breathing hard. She rubbed her temples in an effort to dispel the constant headache she'd been fighting for the past few days.

It was over. She'd won. But as she watched Puck sit back down at his table and tear open the paper bag, she wondered if this truce would actually last.

* * *

Puck battled the feeling of losing all day, debating reverting back to his devious ways and breaking their truce. Late that night, he lay awake in the hammock that Jake had bought him once they'd returned to Ferryport Landing and Puck had decided he'd outgrown his trampoline, turning ideas over in his mind.

Finally, he caved to instinct. _No one_ out pranked the Trickster King, not even Sabrina, who he was starting to realize might be the person who knew him better than anyone else, even Jake, if she could figure out how to make him tick so easily.

Puck tiptoed down the hallway, looking both ways for anyone up late, and then pressed the handle of Sabrina's door gently. It opened without resistance—after their truce, she must have decided it was safe to stop locking it at night. It was funny that she'd even bothered, because of course all he had to do was morph into a fruit fly and slip through the crack between her door and the ground to get in.

Suppressing a laugh, Puck eased the door shut behind him and blinked as his sharp eyes adjusted to the low light. He thought about how satisfying it would be to see the look of horror on her face when she realized that he'd won.

He looked around the room for inspiration, thinking hard. He usually did not come this far without a plan. Perhaps he could open the window and call in a flock of birds. They'd poop everywhere and, if he was lucky, possibly clock her in the head.

Yes, that could work, Puck decided. But as he crept across the room towards her window, Sabrina let out a gasp. Puck froze, blood pounding in his ears. _He'd been caught._

But Sabrina made no other indication that she was awake or that she'd seen him. Puck counted to ten silently before beginning to move toward the window again, but then Sabrina cried out—the word _no_ strangled among a breathy yell—and Puck looked around wildly, confused.

She cried out again, her bedsprings creaking as she thrashed against an invisible enemy, and Puck recalled a conversation Jake had had with him a few months before they'd returned to Ferryport Landing.

 _Veronica says that Sabrina's started to have nightmares about the war and the foster homes. She thinks it might be PTSD,_ Jake had told him. _But it's hard because there's no one in the human world that she can talk to about it._

The window prank idea entirely forgotten, Puck watched as she twisted under her covers, trapped in a nightmare. What was he supposed to do? Listening to this was making him physically nauseous, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. But if he shook her awake, she'd be angry at him for sneaking into her room, and that wouldn't be good, either.

He should just leave. He'd pretend he'd never come, no one would know he had ever been here, and this would become someone else's problem. It was his usual strategy.

But Sabrina began to sob in her sleep, and Puck cracked—before he could really process what he was doing, he'd grabbed an eraser off her desk and pelted it across the room, hitting her squarely on the shoulder. It was enough to wake her up, and as she sat up Puck spun on his heel and transformed back into a fruit fly. Perched on her desk, he watched, frozen, as she wiped her eyes, sitting hunched under her blankets, gulping air, struggling to control her breathing. It wasn't until she'd calmed back down and gone back to sleep that Puck left. He didn't transform back until he'd reached his own room, and then he lay in his hammock, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Eventually he rose and went to lie down on his trampoline, hoping the familiarity would help. He watched the stars move above him, struggling to understand why he was so upset.

It was because Sabrina was his friend, he thought. Regardless of the past two weeks, she was becoming one of his closest friends in Ferryport Landing. And Puck knew from his short stint in the human world, in the Grimm household and traveling with Jake, that friends didn't like to see each other upset or angry.

He was unaccustomed to having friends. It was not the same in Faerie, Puck reflected, his eyes tracking a comet across the wide open sky above him. The Fair Folk had existed long enough that they forgot how to care about each other. Caring about other creatures was tiring, he guessed, after thousands of years of doing it. It was easier to not bother. After all, that was what had gotten him exiled in the first place—Oberon had cared more about getting his way than the fact that Puck had been scared.

The constellations in his room were not the same ones that dotted the night sky above his roof. These were the constellations from his birthplace, a small island off the coast of Ireland called the Isle of Stars. It was one of the seven ancient kingdoms of the Fae, which Oberon's ancestors had ruled from the beginning of known time up until four thousand years ago, when they'd first sighted humans on the shore of the mainland. Oberon had promptly sent a battalion to conquer a larger kingdom in the general area of England, deciding he would take the known danger of other fairies over the unknown danger of the humans, who had suddenly learned to wield metal weapons. And so they left, trading the natural concealments of the Isle for conjured enchantments on the misty, cold shores of what would one day be London. Puck had been very young then, eleven for the first time, and he had fought leaving, had hated England, and disliked it even more when Oberon and Titania deemed London too populated and carried their entire kingdom with them to New York.

Puck had stopped growing the day they'd left the Isle of Stars. Up until Ferryport Landing, it was the only place he'd ever really considered home, even though he'd lived there so long ago that he could barely picture it anymore. The only reason he could still trace the constellations above him was because they'd had maps of the old skies in the libraries of Faerie, and when Puck had wanted to escape the wrath of his father he'd stolen away to the memorize them. Someone had taken the time to trace dotted lines of golden ink to show the shapes: a pair of wings, a centaur, a bow and arrow, a dryad emerging from her tree, lovers wrapped in a starry embrace.

Puck lay under his artificial sky, no longer eleven, feeling confused and lost in more ways than he could articulate. He did not fall asleep until the sun began to spill light over the horizon and, one by one, the constellations of the Isle of Stars blinked out.

 **Hi everyone! I would apologize for the delay in posting this, but if you were with me for Tales from the Tundra, you know that I'm just like this. I have no idea when I'll be posting chapter 4, but it's already in the works.**

 **This chapter is v long, longer than I wanted it to be, but I couldn't figure out where to break it in half and it's been a while since I've posted so I just kept it. I liked writing this chapter because I always sort of wondered why Sabrina never tried very hard to retaliate against Puck's pranks in the past. And I think at some point the two of them have to grow up a bit and realize there are other ways to express themselves besides pranks. I thought that there needed to be some clear catalyst for how the transition of kids constantly at each other's throat to friends happened. My goal was to also have them insert themselves safely into the Friendzone, so we'll see how that goes for them.**

 **I also enjoyed writing Puck's introspection about home, and what it's like to have friends. Puck has this whole past that was never really addressed in the books, and so one of my goals in this fic is to figure out what his life was really like before everything we know about him.**

 **For those who are curious, 4,000 years ago (when Puck stopped growing) was the end of the Bronze Age—the era of human civilization when bronze was the common material for tools and weapons, and also the beginning of recorded human history/proto-writing (think Egyptian hieroglyphs and cuneiform). So there were humans around, but their civilizations were not very advanced or well documented. But they would have been prevalent enough that, if we're speaking within the parameters of this story, the Fae would be beginning to conceal themselves from people. Not sure if that'll come into this story at all, but its interesting regardless.**

 **Guest reviews:**

 **2/9/18: I'm glad you liked it! I hope you like this update as well!**

 **1/18/18: Aw, thank you! It means a lot that you took the time to write this even though you didn't have time to read the chapter. I'm glad you liked Tales from the Tundra and I hope you like this story as well when you get a chance to read it! Glad to be back as well!**


	4. Fort Charming Again

"Open the door!" Daphne cried, knocking on the bathroom door for the third time that morning.

"Go away!" Puck roared, again.

Daphne groaned and rested her head against the wood. "Can I come in? I need to brush my teeth!"

"No, Daphne! Leave me alone!"

"Oh my god, is he still in there?" Sabrina snapped, hurrying down the hallway with a towel over her shoulder. "We finished eating twenty minutes ago. I have to shower!"

Daphne gave her sister an exasperated look. "Sabrina, I need to brush my teeth."

Sabrina growled and pounded on the door. "What could you possibly still be doing in there? Get out, get out, get out!"

There was a thud from inside the bathroom as Puck kicked the door in response.

Suddenly Pinocchio was behind her.

"Is he serious? I need to shave!"

Sabrina and Daphne looked at him in disbelief.

"No you don't," Sabrina snapped, giving the boy who had been growing so quickly that he now resembled a sixteen-year-old a scathing look.

"Sabrina," Pinocchio said in exasperation. "Look at my chin."

Sabrina squinted and scrutinized his face. "There is literally no hair there. Go eat breakfast or something, the rest of us need to get ready."

"You have plenty of time to get ready, you don't even _go_ to school," said Daphne, who was usually more patient with Pinocchio's antics than Sabrina. After Pinocchio had moved in, he'd determined that he was too smart for high school and gotten his GED. Now, he would tell anyone that would listen that he was completing an online degree in History with a concentration in Francophone studies, whatever that meant. They actually didn't see him that much, because he was usually either in the town library or shut in his room. " _We_ have to be out the door in twenty minutes."

"It's 7:00 in the freaking morning on a Friday," Sabrina snapped. "Why are you even awake?"

"Because _some_ of us value the mornings," sneered the boy.

"I thank god every day that I'm not one of those people," Sabrina snarled.

A new set of feet padded down the hallway, and then Red was there. "Ugh! This again? You guys, we seriously need to write up a schedule."

"We need another bathroom," Daphne replied.

Pinocchio tossed his hair, which fell in waves to his chin. "We need to figure out who's going in next."

"Not you!" chorused Daphne and Sabrina.

"Watch me," replied Pinocchio.

"I have to pee!" cried Red.

"This is ridiculous," Sabrina said, handing her towel to a confused Daphne. She hammered on the door again. "Time's up, Snotface!"

Puck ignored her, which was a mistake. Sabrina was already jiggling her trusty bobby pin in the lock. Everyone in the hallway watched in horrified awe as she turned the handle fearlessly and threw the door open so hard that it slammed into the wall.

Puck, who had been struggling to style his hair this entire time, jumped and dropped Uncle Jake's container of hair gel into the sink, his face turning bright red. His mouth fell open and he lunged forward to close the door, but Pinocchio had already elbowed his way in, followed by the three girls.

And then they were all yelling at each other, trying to reach toothbrushes and towels and hairbrushes and razors. Sabrina was motioning for everyone to get out while Daphne sat down on the floor in a refusal to leave.

Finally, Sabrina banged on the door to get everyone's attention.

"Hey!" she cried, and everyone fell silent except Puck and Pinocchio. Daphne reached out and pressed the pressure point behind both of their left knees, eliciting yelps from both of them.

"Snow needs to stop teaching the two of you things!" Puck snapped, hopping up and down on his right leg. He pointed at Sabrina. "You! Just because you know how to pick a lock doesn't mean you should! What if I had been naked?"

Sabrina gave him a look full of venom.

"You're like a little girl, getting in everyone's way as you try stupid techniques to make yourself look _prettier_!"

"What, techniques like testing out makeup in the bathroom at three o'clock in the morning?"

Sabrina pulled Uncle Jake's hair gunk out of the sink and threw it at his head. "Take this and get out of here!"

Puck caught the tin a moment before it could clock him in the nose. "I deserve my bathroom time! I don't even have a birth certificate!"

This was an argument that normally worked on Sabrina, but she _really_ had to shower.

"You're not going to get one based off of how your hair looks, so get out!"

"You get out," said Puck, folding his arms.

"You two always get what you want!" cried Pinocchio. "I want to shave!"

"Children, children!" cried Granny, running into the bathroom in her nightgown. "What's going on in here? Why is Daphne on the floor?"

All five of them stared at her for a moment, and then started up again, pointing at each other and yelling.

"Hush!" Granny cried. It was too early for this nonsense. She chose the most rational one. "Red, explain please."

"Everyone needs to use the bathroom for different things," Red replied from the corner she'd been cowering in.

"Puck has been in here playing with his hair for twenty minutes while the rest of us waited," Sabrina added, glaring at him.

Pinocchio rolled his eyes. "Why can't the pig men come back and build us another bathroom?"

"They have names—" Sabrina interjected, but Granny cut her off.

"Because we don't need another bathroom. Since all the adult bedrooms now have their own bathrooms, it's really just the five of you using this one. What you all need is to figure out how to share," Granny said loudly, and then, seeing the looks of exasperation on the faces of her favorite children, conceded, "I can see about installing a second sink."

"What about a second toilet?" Puck suggested.

" _No_ ," responded everyone else.

"For today, I have a small solution. Puck, Sabrina, I need to see you both. Pinocchio, let Red and Daphne share the bathroom for now."

"Why?" Sabrina asked. "I need to shower."

"What about us?" Daphne asked.

"Now," said Granny, somehow deaf to Daphne's question.

"If I had a nickel for every time you've said that," Puck grouched to Sabrina. "Why don't you just shower at night like the rest of us?"

" _Because_ the rest of you shower at night," Sabrina replied as they followed Granny out the door. "It's like, a three hour long timed competition that I have no interest in being a part of."

"Because you would lose," Puck muttered under his breath.

They continued to bicker as Granny led them down the hallway and into Sabrina's parent's bedroom, where Veronica and Robin Hood were waiting.

"Hamstead came late last night," said Veronica, rising from her perch at the edge of the bed that Sabrina and Daphne had shared before they'd moved back to New York. "He sent the fabric you two found up to the Archives of Oz, in Canada, and the results came back. The fabric _is_ from the Patchwork Girl."

"You two were already in bed, but we held a late meeting last night and determined that the Patchwork Girl, and probably also the Glass Cat, are in fact in Ferryport Landing," Robin Hood added. "Morgan's intel tells us that they were some of the best spies in the Hand's old army, so it's probable that they've been recruited again and are here for information."

"Information on what?" asked Puck.

"We don't know," replied Robin Hood with a frown.

Sabrina crossed her arms. "Well, what are we going to do about it?"

"Between the census we sent out last month, and Morgan and Mordred, we thought we had a good idea of what Everafters were still in town," Veronica said. "It doesn't bode well that these two are hiding in the woods, unseen. Today, Snow, Henry, and I are going out to do some preliminary scouting of the woods behind the High School and look for clues."

Robin Hood added, "Relda will be getting in secure contact with Mordred and Morgan and letting them know what we've found out. Jake is our point guy with spells, so I'm having him contact Bunny and set up some sort of magical monitoring system in the woods around town that the two of them can trip."

"What about us?" Puck said, gesturing to himself and Sabrina. "I could do a flyby or something."

Veronica shook her head. "I told you two that we'd keep you updated, but it's too dangerous to have you two out and about with these two skulking around."

"You two did a great job bringing this to our attention, but just sit tight, okay? We'll take it from here," said Robin Hood with a kind smile.

* * *

" _We'll take it from here_ ," Sabrina muttered in a whiny voice that sounded nothing like Robin Hood, slamming her locker shut and balancing her textbooks and her lunch box with difficulty. "I mean, can you believe that? In the old days, before the war, we would've done this alone and I bet we would've caught her faster than they will."

"I get that they're keeping you out of this, what with your stalker and all," Puck replied, lowering his voice as a group of freshmen passed them. "But me? I'm literally older than all of them combined! This is so unfair!"

Sabrina scowled. "Danger is everywhere. I can handle myself and I don't know why they can't see that!"

"I know you can, Gasbag. I'm not the one just telling you to sit around and wait."

"Plus," Sabrina said, and then waved her lunchbox around as she searched for the right words. "I don't know, I keep thinking about that person who put those letters in my mailbox in New York and wondering if it was the Patchwork Girl. What if she's been spying on us for years?"

Puck paused with his hand on his locker door, processing her theory. "That would be bad."

"We have to do something! We should go looking for clues after school," Sabrina pressed.

"What, and run right into your parents and Snow? That would be easy to explain," Puck said with a sarcastic laugh, slamming his locker shut. "Besides, aren't you supposed to hang out with Josh after school?"

The look of confusion on her face was oddly gratifying. She blinked and replied, "Yeah, I am."

Puck's eyes flicked away from her and down the hallway. "Speaking of which."

Josh was coming down the hallway with his usual assemblage of friends. His eyes had locked on Sabrina and he veered away from the group.

There was something about the way Josh looked at Sabrina that irritated Puck. He wasn't sure why, but he didn't like being around them together, and so he gave Sabrina a simpering smile and said, "I'll see you in English."

"Wait," Sabrina hissed, but he strode away without looking back, feeling a strange sort of satisfaction that she would rather talk to him. Even though, he thought hastily, Josh couldn't exactly help her find the Patchwork Girl.

Sabrina turned around to find Josh leaning against the locker next to hers with a roguish grin on his face.

"Hey."

"How's your day been?" Sabrina asked as they headed towards the lunchroom.

"Not great," said Josh. "Just bombed a quiz in Algebra."

Sabrina grimaced. "You have Geissler, right? I have that quiz later."

"I'm sure you'll ace it," Josh said, pulling open the cafeteria door. "You're actually good at math."

Sabrina smiled for the first time that day. She still wasn't sure how she felt about Josh. She didn't know him very well and he could get obnoxious around his friends, but he was usually pretty sweet when they were alone. And he'd immediately agreed to eating with her friends at lunch, which was a bonus.

Everyone in their grade thought they were a couple, but they weren't actually dating. They'd kissed a few times, but he hadn't officially asked her to be his girlfriend, and Sabrina wasn't really sure what to do about that. She'd thought about asking him a couple of times herself, but Arianna, who had recently dumped a boy, kept complaining about how her boyfriend never told her anything, even though people in relationships were supposed to want to tell each other everything. After growing up watching her parents, Sabrina thought she was right.

And there was just so much she could not, would not even if she could, tell Josh.

But she was only fourteen, so who knew? Maybe one day she would want to tell Josh all of the things in her life that were too surreal to comprehend.

"Sabrina," Rachel said as they sat down, and Sabrina realized that she and Josh were both looking at her expectantly.

"What?"

"Josh asked if you're going to his game tomorrow," Rachel explained.

"Yeah, I am. I might bring Daphne. She thinks she wants to try soccer," said Sabrina, wishing she could stop thinking about immortality and the Patchwork Girl and focus on her friends like a normal teenager.

Midway through the lunch period, while Josh was talking to Maddie, Sabrina decided she couldn't take it anymore. She pulled out her phone underneath the table and texted Puck.

 _If my parents and Snow don't find anything we need to go searching. This weekend?_

She tapped the edge of her phone nervously while waiting for it to buzz. After a few moments of waiting, she stopped talking to Rachel mid-sentence and checked her phone.

 _idk_

Boys, Sabrina thought vehemently. She was about to chew him out for being an idiot when he texted her again.

 _we need a better plan than that_

 _if we didn't find them last time we ran around in the woods that probs wont work now either_

 _i don't wanna find another piece of quilt that will take hamstead 3 more weeks to analyze_

Sabrina blew out a breath.

 _What if im right? What if they're not just lying low, they're here for us?_

Sabrina hesitated and then typed the thing that had been bothering her most all morning.

 _We never told them about the first ripped quilt piece we found. The bloody one._

They made eye contact across the cafeteria. She could see his grimace, and then he looked down at his phone.

 _this weekend. if ur not too busy making out with ur boyfriend that is_

Sabrina flushed and glared at him, but he was carefully avoiding her eye.

 _He's not my boyfriend._

 _I'm free this weekend_

Then she put her phone away and didn't look at it again for the rest of lunch.

* * *

Veronica, Henry, and Snow scouted different areas of the woods for weeks, but kept coming back empty-handed. Unbeknownst to the three of them, Puck and Sabrina were on the lookout, too. They had started taking long walks around the edges of town, searching for a sign that the Patchwork Girl and Glass Cat might have moved inward from the forest.

But the weather grew colder and colder, forcing everyone indoors. December rolled in and left the sharp taste of snow on their tongues. The Grimm household took a trip to the city to see the Rockefeller tree, and on Christmas Granny Relda cooked a feast of classic German holiday food that even Sabrina couldn't complain about.

December froze into January, and house dripped with icicles. Sabrina helped Puck restore the security sensors for the house he'd created back when Canis had gone to jail. Josh stopped sitting with Sabrina at lunch and didn't come to the fifteenth birthday party that Rachel threw her, but Sabrina, whose sleep was becoming more frequently disturbed by nightmares about the Patchwork Girl and the Hand, found herself too exhausted to care. Different members of the Council reached out to different Everafters, searching for information on the Hand's spy networks.

No matter how long and hard everyone looked, there was no sign of the Patchwork Girl and Glass Cat.

"They're around," Jake insisted tiredly, late one night in the meeting room. "They keep tripping the sensors Bunny and I set up in the woods, but they're always gone by the time we get there."

It wasn't until March, when the world finally started to melt again, that Jake and Snow found evidence of another fire, this one high up on Mount Taurus. Clearly, the spies had taken their base camp to high altitudes to wait out the winter.

"I suppose they're both unbothered by the cold," Relda had pointed out during a Council meeting.

"They might be hiding out in the old castle," Veronica said excitedly, opening her file folder with information on the case. "We haven't scouted up there yet."

"We should send a team up there," Jake suggested. "Maybe for a stakeout?"

Sabrina, who had argued her way into the meeting but was still texting Rachel under the table, looked up and cried, "Yes!"

"That would be sick," added Puck.

"I think a stakeout is our only real option at this point," said Veronica with a sigh, uncapping a pen and scribbling on the memo she'd written back in November.

But Henry caught Sabrina's eye and raised an eyebrow.

"No," he said, gesturing towards his daughter. "I can't speak for Puck—that's Jake's job—but Sabrina is not helping with this. It's too dangerous. I already don't like that we're letting her into these meetings."

"Puck can help," Uncle Jake said immediately, around a mouthful of potato chips.

"Excuse me?" Sabrina said. "Dad, you would still be in a coma if not for me and Daphne. I did all sorts of dangerous stuff. Why can't I help?"

And so after much begging and arguing, and several shouting matches between Sabrina and Henry, Sabrina was allowed to go. They waited until one of the sensors on the opposite side of town as the castle had been tripped, which happened on March 16th, the night after Daphne's birthday.

"Are you sure you want to come?" Veronica asked Sabrina for the millionth time, still holding onto hope that stalking around a drafty castle wouldn't appeal to her daughter.

"Yes, Mom," Sabrina insisted, rolling her eyes.

"Listen," said Jake down the hall, closing Puck's door gently behind him. The boy fairy poked his head out of the tree where he'd been nestled, scribbling away in his journal. "About this stakeout. We don't know how dangerous it'll be. If it gets ugly up there, Puck, grab Sabrina, get out of there, don't stop flying until you get home, and tell Relda to lock up. Okay?"

Puck frowned and swung out of his tree, tossing his journal carelessly to the side, where it landed in a small pile of chewed pen caps and dirty underwear. Jake made a mental note to bug him to do his laundry.

"What about the rest of you?"

Jake shook his head. "Honestly, we're really worried that Sabrina and Daphne are the targets of whatever the Scarlet Hand is planning. You flying away with her might even prompt the two of them to chase you, I don't know. No matter what Henry says, she deserves to be able to come just as much as you, but we also need to make sure she'll be safe. Just promise me."

And so the final stakeout team consisted of Veronica, Hank, Snow, Jake, Robin Hood, Puck, and Sabrina. Once they'd all armed themselves and figured out how to get their headsets to connect to each other, they said goodbye to Little John and Relda, who had set up a base in the meeting room, and went to meet Charming.

Charming drove them halfway up the mountain in a large pickup truck. The road was rocky and riddled with potholes, and Sabrina spent the ride growing more and more nervous as she was bumped and jostled against Snow, who kept muttering directions in her ear.

Sabrina tried to remember everything Snow said as they got out of the truck and began the long trek to the castle. The sun was beginning to sink, and with it went any warmth that the world had to offer.

 _You have a sword, which won't do much against the Patchwork Girl or the Glass Cat, but if you wave it around threateningly enough it should scare them off… I suppose you can smash the hilt into the Glass Cat if it comes to it, I'm not really sure how sturdy she is… just rip the Patchwork Girl's arm off if it comes to it… this shouldn't come to blows, though, Sabrina, we're mostly looking to assess what they're doing, this is just precautionary, they're probably not even in the area…._

Sabrina's fingers were numb with cold and her heart was in her mouth. Yes, the spies had tripped a sensor all the way across town, meaning they should be nowhere nearby, but were they certain they'd beaten them back? What if something else had tripped the sensor and the spies were actually watching them right now?

And then they set foot within the courtyard, and Sabrina's lungs contracted. She had not been here since the war. No one had been here since the war.

Charming's camp had been trashed in the short amount of time that the Hand had inhabited it. The cabins had been demolished. There were piles of garbage and splotches on the sand that looked suspiciously like blood. Nature had begun the process of reclaiming its land, and twiggy, naked trees had sprouted among the piles of bricks and dusting of snow. Woody vines snaked their way up the courtyard's walls, brown from winter.

Sabrina fought down a wave of nausea that had little to do with the physical scene in front of her. This was where she'd learned only she and Daphne could save the world. This was where she'd raised an army. This was where she'd saved Puck's life and locked the Scarlet Hand away.

This was where they'd buried Briar and Seven.

Sabrina could hear the blood pounding in her ears.

Uncle Jake prodded her on the back and they started walking, leaving Veronica and Snow behind to scout the courtyard. Once they'd slipped inside the castle, the rest of the group climbed the stairs to the top floor. Robin Hood and Jake took the left wing and Henry, Puck and Sabrina took the right wing, planning on moving downward through the floors, searching every room until they were back in the courtyard.

"Stay behind me," Henry ordered, switching on his headlamp as the sun dropped below the horizon. "Don't get distracted, and don't talk."

He looked at Puck, expecting a snide comment or a challenge, but the boy was watching him silently, waiting for him to lead on. Henry was taken aback, but started moving down the corridor.

Each room contained evidence of sudden abandonment. Once the Hand had realized the barrier had dropped—which had taken a few weeks, according to Morgan—the Everafters had fled without a backward glance, leaving behind unmade beds, half eaten meals, and extra clothes. A thick layer of dust coated the floors and cobwebs draped the corners of the rooms. Sabrina found herself looking over her shoulder again and again. She couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them.

After about twenty minutes, when Puck, Henry, and Sabrina were tiptoeing down the first floor, a single beep made everyone jump, and then Jake's voice came through each person's headset.

"No sign of current occupancy on this side. We're moving to the rendezvous."

"All clear on the ground. We're also moving," came Veronica's voice.

A chill raced up Sabrina's spine. That must mean the unchecked rooms on their final floor would have something. Or their theory was wrong and the spies weren't using this creepy castle after all.

Puck peered into a room and then motioned wildly for the other two to follow him in. It looked the same as every other room to Sabrina, except Puck then pointed to the corner, when there was a small pile of what looked like glass pellets.

"Glass Cat turds," Puck whispered, reaching for one. "Awesome!"

"Ew, Gasbag, don't touch that," Sabrina hissed. They scanned the rest of the room and found a half-eaten dead mouse in another corner, as well as several shiny trinkets buried in a ratty blanket underneath the window.

"Quiet," said Henry.

They moved back out into the hallway. Henry twisted the handle of the last door, which was in view of the entrance hall and sweeping staircase they'd first climbed, and found it locked. All three of them stared at the knob in shock for a moment, and then Sabrina pushed her father out of the way, prying a bobby pin apart with her teeth. She set to work while Puck and Henry watched the corridors. Everyone breathed a little easier once the lock clicked and the door swung open.

This room was the first room that looked lived in. On one of the walls was a large map of Ferryport Landing, marked with red and blue circles and lines. Henry's mouth dropped, and then he reached into his pocket for his phone to take a picture.

The headset burst to life.

"Hank! The suspects—they just appeared out of nowhere! They're in the courtyard, heading toward the main doors—get out of there now!"

It was Veronica again. Sabrina's chest-squeezing panic returned. Puck raced to close and lock the door again and Henry darted toward the window and forced it open.

"Come on," Henry ordered as the heavy front doors of the castle creaked open. He motioned for the two to follow, and then dropped out the window.

Sabrina made a split-second decision. They'd come here for information, and she was going to get it. Instead of following her father, she hit the ground and rolled under the bed, sneezing as the dust ruffle tickled her nose. She heard the rattle of a key in the lock, and the next thing she knew Puck had slid after her. Sabrina wriggled until she was pressed against the wall and Puck followed, scowling in a way that indicated he did not approve of her plan.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. Hiding two people was much more dangerous than just one.

"Shut up!" he whispered back.

The door swung inward and they both fell silent.

Sabrina swallowed hard and held her breath, terrified that they would be discovered as the theories she'd been stewing over for the past few months swirled around her had evidence of the Glass Cat, but had they finally found the Patchwork Girl? Or was this the lair of something much, much worse, like whoever had replaced Mirror as Master?

Through the hairline gap between the dust ruffle and the ground, Sabrina and Puck saw a pair of pointed red shoes. The feet that they were attached to paced back and forth, and a disembodied voice spoke.

"What a waste of a trip. Tomorrow, we'll have to go far more east. The voice sounded high and cutesy and incredibly out of place in this abandoned castle.

"I'm not going to be the one to call and tell the Commander that we wasted more time. It's your fault we haven't completed this mission yet, what with your infuriating inability to cope with snow." Translucent claws clicked against the tile, following the red shoes.

At the disconcerting pitch and tone of this second voice, Sabrina's dinner threatened to make a reappearance. The Cat. The Cat was in the room. And talking.

Would the Cat be able to smell them?

"Without me you'd be at the bottom of the harbor right now, you insolent piece of glass. Watch your mouth, Bungle, or I'll remove your brains."

"At least I have a brain. _You_ are a literal bedspread!"

Sabrina wiped sweat off her hairline, her heart hammering so loudly she was terrified that the two spies could hear it.

The Patchwork Girl harrumphed. "You stay right here, fleabag, while I call the Commander. If we're lucky it will be only him in the room, and not the General as well."

Puck and Sabrina glanced at each other. General? Commander?

"Fine," snarled the Glass Cat.

Silence fell in the small room. Sabrina tried to breathe quietly. Puck was chewing his lip the way he did when he got nervous. Their shoulders were pressed together, and one of them was shaking, but Sabrina could not tell who.

There was a strange buzzing sound, and then a click and an exhale.

"What is it?"

This new voice sounded deep and gravelly and exasperated, like it hadn't been needed in several millennia and was not eager to start talking again anytime soon.

"Commander," said the Patchwork Girl. "We've scouted the entire western half of Ferryport Landing. There's no sign of her."

"No sign?" roared the Commander. "All of our intel indicates that the crone remains within her old barrier. Scraps, Bungle, if you do not find the witch and buy her support, our plan is ruined."

"The terrain proves most difficult, Commander," the Patchwork Girl replied, an irritated edge creeping into her delicate voice. "We cannot locate the suspect and her house in the blustering snowstorms."

"Perhaps the Grimms are harboring her," the voice suggested. "Have you searched their residence?"

"Of course, Commander," said the Glass Cat, causing Sabrina's stomach to twist. "Are you positive that Glinda is not powerful enough to accomplish the task without her?"

"Of course she isn't! I am starting to doubt that you two were the best spies in the Master's army," growled the Commander. "I need to see progress, or I'm pulling you two back into base and sending someone else out."

With a second click, the Commander was gone. And then the Glass Cat hissed, which made the hairs on the back of Sabrina's neck rise. She was definitely the one shaking, not Puck. She wished she could stop.

"I am going to go hunt for dinner. Tomorrow, we move again," the Glass Cat snapped. "Open the…Scraps!"

"What?" growled the Patchwork Girl.

"You didn't close the window!"

"Of course I did. I always close the—"

And then the Patchwork Girl stop talking. Sabrina watched the red shoes whisper across the floor to the window, followed by the paws.

Sabrina and Puck looked at each other in horror and held their breath.

Sabrina's skin prickled in the tense silence. After a long, painful moment where the Glass Cat and Patchwork Girl seemed to remain completely still, the Patchwork Girl strode across the room. They heard the door open and waited for the Glass Cat to follow, but it stayed behind, flicking its elaborately spun glass tail back and forth. A low hissing noise began to fill the prickly silence.

It had to know they were here. Sabrina nudged Puck with her shoulder and mouthed, _Transform!_

If he could get out and cause a distraction, then she could possibly make it out the window.

But Puck pressed his lips together and shook his head. Sabrina narrowed her eyes, trying to communicate her seriousness, but it was hard to explain her plan through glares. Instead of disappearing, he grabbed her hand and shook it, which Sabrina took to mean, _I'm not leaving you to fend for yourself,_ and had no idea if she should be touched or offended.

Their silent exchange was cut off by the sound of the Cat moving. Sabrina watched, dreading what was about to happen as the Cat circled the bed and came to a halt at the foot of it.

Sabrina tried to think. There was a knife tucked into the back of her waistband that she could probably reach, but what good would it do against a glorified lawn ornament coming at her from the direction of her feet? They were effectively trapped.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash from the courtyard. Sabrina and Puck both jumped, and the Glass Cat yowled.

From the hallway, the Patchwork Girl yelled something in a language that Sabrina didn't know. As the Glass Cat howled in return, Sabrina let go of Puck and began to wriggle downwards, towards the end of the bed. Alarmed, Puck reached out and grabbed her jacket, but relented when she reached up to swat him. She twisted so that she was lying on her side, grabbed the bedsprings above her head, and pulled her knees toward her chest. When the cat pressed itself back on its haunches, ready to shoot underneath the bed and rip them to shreds, Sabrina kicked out hard with both feet, squeezing the bedsprings for extra momentum.

The collision jarred her teeth. It felt like her sneakers had hit concrete. The Cat howled, but it only swayed on its haunches, instead of flying backwards as Sabrina had hoped. Sabrina had not thought past this one move, and would've been in deep trouble if Puck had not taken the opportunity to roll sideways from their hiding place.

He vaulted over the bed to attack from above, giving Sabrina a change to army crawl out after him. She jumped up in time to see the Cat lunge at Puck and knock him to the ground. Sabrina looked around wildly, and finding nothing she could use as a weapon, threw herself into the fray. It took every ounce of strength she had to pull the Cat off Puck, and she almost couldn't do it, because living glass felt oddly warm and slippery.. Finally, her fingers found purchase around its midsection and she threw it. The Cat rolled, a spiderweb of cracks forming across its back that instantly smoothed back out with a series of loud tinkling noises.

"What are you doing here?" Sabrina demanded, leaping to the side as the Glass Cat threw its body towards her again. "Who do you work for?"

There was recognition in the terrifying red of the Cat's eyes. "Grimm child," it hissed, and darted toward her with astonishing speed. She was not so lucky this second time, and cried out in pain as the Cat raked its claws across her leggings. She staggered back as it wound up to strike again, but this time Puck was there, with a sweeping kick that was powerful enough to send the Cat sailing through the dust ruffle and underneath the bed. They heard it hit the wall with a deafening crash, and then Sabrina bent to examine her leg, gasping in pain and shock at the four deep gashes that had been gouged into her calf.

"Time to go," Puck said over the eerie tinkling noise that meant the Cat was healing.

Sabrina looked between the door and the window and then limped towards the window. Every step made pain shoot up her leg. Gripping the sill, she looked down. Fort Charming was built on a slope, and even on the first floor, the ground was about ten feet away. Henry must've had to dangle and then fall to avoid hurting himself.

"I don't know if I can land on this leg," Sabrina said, watching the bed in fear.

"Get on the sill," Puck ordered, and Sabrina clambered up without thinking to question his plan. He took a few steps back, a look of determination in his eyes.

"Oh, my god, no!" Sabrina yelled at him, but it was too late. He seemed to mentally prepare himself and then started to run towards her. As the Cat skittered back out from underneath the bed, he jumped and hit her in a pseudo-tackle. They fell toward the cold, hard ground—which was much closer than Puck would have liked, he was suddenly certain they were going to slam into it and break everything—and then his wings materialized and he gave several aggressive flaps that were somehow enough to catch a weak draft and send them upwards. Puck gritted his teeth, his muscles burning as he strained to flap hard enough to get them over the large wall that bricked in the courtyard. Sabrina had flailed during their original drop and then flung her arms around his neck, squeezing in a way that was somehow very distracting. Luckily, knocking her off a window seemed to have shocked her into silence, and she didn't regain her voice until they were soaring over the treetops.

"What are you doing? We have to go back!" Sabrina spluttered when she'd regained her voice.

Puck was in great disbelief and incredible pain after successfully completing the most risky maneuver he'd ever attempted. "Can't."

"Why?" Sabrina cried, oblivious to how winded he was.

" _Sabrina_ ," Puck hissed in exasperation, his eyes darting in every direction as he searched for their comrades on the ground.

Mercifully, she fell into a doubtful silence, but even though she was pressed against him, facing the clouds, she tried to crane her neck to see the ground, searching as well.

"Hello?" she said into her headset. "Can anybody hear me? Hello?"

But the ominous silence she got in response meant that they were out of range.

Puck set his jaw and focused on flying. For some reason, flying was similar to running in that it was easier at a downward angle, and as they skimmed the treetops down the mountain he was able to properly catch his breath and pick up the pace.

Sabrina could not contain herself any longer. "Isn't that where we're supposed to meet Charming?"

Puck was hesitant to tell Sabrina what Jake had asked of him, because he knew she would flip out. "Jake told me to fly you home if we got caught."

Just as he thought she would, Sabrina bristled. "And leave everyone behind? Are they serious?"

"Because they're all worried the spies are looking for you," Puck snapped loudly, before she could start complaining about being treated like a child. "Which is exactly what your theory was the other day, let me remind you."

"Come on, Gasbag, we have to make sure they get out!"

"But—"

Sabrina narrowed her fiery blue eyes and said, "Is this what you've become, Puck? A rule follower?"

Puck glared back, a slow fury that only Sabrina could seem to ignite in him beginning to burn.

He could feel Sabrina subconsciously dig her fingernails into his shoulder. "We have to be there if they need help!"

"I don't _help_ people, Grimm! I am a villain of the worst—"

" _Jake_ is down there, Puck!"

Puck didn't answer, but he did roll his eyes scathingly, note the direction of Charming's truck, tilt his left wing, and send them on a dizzying downward spiral that made Sabrina yelp, which was satisfying.

And then they were bobbing and weaving between tree trunks. Puck had been practicing this while wearing a weight vest during his private lessons with Snow. After slamming directly into many, many trees—he was thankful, not that he would ever admit it, that Snow had refused to help him until he'd put on a helmet—he'd become much faster and more agile. Sabrina, on the other hand, was so paralyzed for fear of being skewered by a tree that she couldn't draw breath.

And then the headset crackled to life. "Puck? Sabrina?"

It was Henry. It took every effort for Sabrina to suck in air. "We're here! We're okay! Where are you? Do you need help?"

"We're fine! The suspects ran through the courtyard, right past us like we weren't even there, and we've been chasing them ever since, but it's like they just disappeared! Where are you? Tell me you're airborne!" Henry demanded. He was out of breath too, as if he'd been running.

"We're flying home," said Puck, glaring at Sabrina as daring her to argue with him. "They just disappeared? You didn't see where they went? They didn't attack you?"

"No," Robin Hood replied, a frustrated edge in his voice. "Literally, they went past us like we weren't even there. We're going to keep searching. Get the hell home and lock up, kids," Robin Hood ordered.

For once, neither Sabrina nor Puck tried to argue. The flight home felt too long, and they both kept looking down at the ground for a flash of color that meant they were being followed. Because they had not chosen to attack the others, Puck was almost certain that the Patchwork Girl and the Glass Cat were following Sabrina. Panicked adrenaline surged through his veins as they reached their lawn and touched down hard, staggering on the landing. Puck had been flying so fast that when Sabrina let go of him he doubled over, gasping for breath, as she began to limp towards the house.

"Granny! Granny!" Sabrina yelled once she'd crossed the threshold.

Red and Daphne looked up from the couch, identical looks of confusion on their faces.

"Sabrina?" Daphne asked as her sister hit a wall and slid to the ground, her face pale.

Little John appeared in the hallway. "What?"

"Lock up!" Sabrina yelled.

Daphne expected Little John to question her, but instead he turned and yelled down the hallway, "Relda, lock up!"

"What's going on?" Daphne asked as Puck staggered into the house and then collapsed onto the ground, nearly wheezing. "Puck?"

Granny appeared and came hurrying down the stairs, Little John on her heels. By now Daphne had turned off the television and was on her feet, watching the scene in utter confusion—Puck, clearly exhausted, Sabrina, clearly in pain, Granny, frantically locking up the house even thought almost no one was home.

"This is just precautionary," Granny assured Daphne and Red as she bustled past the living room. "Don't worry, lieblings."

Daphne rounded on Puck and Sabrina, who were a collective disaster. "What did you two _do_?"

Sabrina had squeezed her eyes shut. Her skin was as white as paper. "Daphne, please get your med kit."

She turned to Puck for an explanation, but he only croaked, "And a Gatorade."

Daphne and Red shared a long look and then went upstairs to get the kit. Although Daphne was worried about her sister, she couldn't help feeling irritated. She and Red had come to suspect that there was something going on in the house, something they were not included in, and this only confirmed it.

"I don't understand," Daphne said to Red as she flattened herself on the floor of their bedroom and reached under her bed for the kit. "Why aren't we important enough to be asked for help, especially now that I'm eleven? Sabrina, Puck and I used to go on adventures all the time, and back then _they_ were eleven, and now…"

She shook her head in disappointment and got to her feet as Red replied, "I don't think it's just Puck and Sabrina."

"What do you mean?"

"Where are your parents? Where's Jake? Why is Little John here? No, there's something bigger happening," Red pointed out as they jogged down the hallway. "We're literally about to go into lockdown. We need to figure out what's going on."

* * *

Jake walked into the living room and handed Henry a beer before dropping onto the couch beside him and taking a sip of his own. They sat in silence for a while, trying to watch the _Friends_ rerun that was on TV even though they were both on edge and kept glancing at the window above them.

It had been a full week since their failed stakeout of the castle, and the Patchwork Girl and Glass Cat had managed to drop off the face of the earth again. Other than knowing their intentions in Ferryport Landing, the Council was worse off than before. Now the spies knew they were watching. They knew the Grimms were aware of their mission. For that reason, Granny had kept the house in lockdown all weekend, despite the kids complaining that they wanted to see their friends, and had then locked it every night until tonight. The silvery moonlight streaming in from the window served as the reason why Jake and Henry felt uncomfortable at the idea of going to sleep.

But there was something else that was bothering Jake. After a brief and vicious internal battle, he forced the words out.

"What made you want kids?"

Henry's doubtful eyes slid to his brother. He refrained from spitting out a snarky comment that Veronica had told him he had to stop making and took a long drink instead.

"I don't know. You marry someone you love and then you start to feel like you want more of that love. So you have kids," Henry replied, feeling uncomfortable enough in this conversation that he could not stop himself from adding, "Why?"

Jake raked a hand through his already unruly hair and sighed. Henry was taken aback by sudden pain in his eyes.

"I was going to marry Briar."

A dark, silent cloud formed in Henry's chest.

"I know," said Henry. After Briar had died, he'd once had a nightmare that he had been in Jake's shoes, and that it had been Ronnie, and he'd known from that moment he'd woken up that he would never understand what Jake had gone through. What he was still going through.

"I don't think I'll ever fall in love again," Jake continued, and the corners of his mouth twitched down. "But I don't want to die, I can't figure out how to grow older, and because of that I can never see her again. I feel almost doomed."

Henry's stomach twisted and he put down his beer, wishing Jake had chosen to have this conversation with someone who was better at feelings, like Ronnie, or their mother.

"She would have wanted you to move on. And be happy. Even if you need more time, don't give up, Jake."

Jake tapped his finger against his glass bottle. He confessed, "I didn't realize how hard it would be to be back here without her. I thought traveling for two years would clear my head, you know?"

"Right," Henry said uncertainly. He saw the shadow that lingered over Jake's face and tried to redirect him. "Why did you ask about kids? Are you saying that you want a kid? You know, you could always adopt. Mom would be thrilled."

"Well, no, not exactly," Jake replied, sinking into the couch cushions as if he was hesitant to tell Henry what was on his mind. He was staring at the television but Henry could tell he had no idea what was happening on the screen. "I don't want a baby or anything. But traveling for two years with Puck, and even now, being in the house with everyone, I feel like I'm responsible for him. And I feel like, in a lot of ways, he needs me."

Henry sat in stunned silence for a long moment, struggling to hold his tongue once again as he tried to read between the lines of what his brother was saying. Finally, he rearranged the words into something less harsh and asked, sure he must be interpreting this wrong, "You want to adopt Puck?"

"Yeah, kinda," Jake replied, meeting Henry's eyes for the first time since he'd sat down. "Is it really that crazy? I mean, it's already the cover story."

"Well," said Henry slowly. "He's four thousand years old. He's not a child."

"He was eleven for four thousand years," Jake corrected, as if that made a difference. "For four thousand years, he had no one. And now, after fending for himself within a monarchy and then in the woods, he's growing up surrounded by people his own age. He's like any other teenager in some ways, isn't he? He needs someone to look up to who isn't crazy, like Oberon and Titania. He needs someone on his side."

Although Henry had a general dislike for Puck, he was surprised that he felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the boy.

"I've taught him a lot already," Jake continued quickly, as if he could see that Henry was warming up to what he was saying. "I helped him figure out how to glamour his ears so they don't look pointy. How human money works, how to use a fork and knife, how to wash and style your hair, how to talk to strangers without hollering about being the 'Trickster King', not to mention the birds and bees—"

Henry nearly choked on his beer. "You had that conversation with him?"

Jake pointed his beer at his brother. "He's going through puberty, someone had to! I mean, he already knew some…some weird, half-version of it from Faerie that I didn't totally understand…do you see what I mean? _Hell_ , Hank, the boy didn't even know that most marriages in the human world aren't arranged. You're welcome for clarifying that, by the way."

Henry actually did choke on his beer. "Is that why he hasn't said a word about being married to Sabrina since you've been back?"

"Yes!" Jake cried, setting down his empty bottle on the coffee table with an audible thunk. "He thought their future marriage was definitely going to happen because it had been _arranged_. And now that he knows nobody's gonna force him into marrying anyone, he's let it go."

For some reason this was very funny to Henry, and also an enormous relief, and then both brothers were cracking up.

"Plus, I know you think he's shallow, but I think a lot of his moodiness and grumpiness traces back to a want for attention," Jake added when they'd calmed down. He wiped his eyes. "Back when you and Veronica were asleep, Puck, Sabrina, and Daphne all received an equal amount of attention from me and mom. Now that you're awake, I think he feels left out. Remember what he did on Sabrina's birthday?"

Henry nodded, feeling a flash of irritation at the memory. "How could I forget? He ruined dinner."

"Which was rude," Jake agreed. "But I talked to him afterwards. None of us have considered how he might feel when we do stuff like that. He doesn't even know when his birthday is."

"He doesn't know?" Henry cried. "I knew he didn't have a birth certificate, but really? That's terrible."

"It was irrelevant information in an eternal monarchy," Jake pointed out. "I don't think anyone ever told him. He's really a good kid underneath all of the damage Oberon and Titania have caused. And someone needs to take care of him and make sure he turns out okay, and I want to be that person."

"You're crazy." Henry was shaking his head in disbelief. "I can't believe we're having this conversation. How would you even be able to adopt him? He's not in the system, right? No social security card, no birth certificate, no passport? Wait, oh my god, how did you get him through customs multiple times?"

"You don't want to know, Hank," Jake said darkly. "I would have to pull a lot of strings for this. A lot. But if he ever wanted an adult life outside of Faerie, he'd have to pull them himself. So I'm willing to do it for him."

"I'll never understand you, brother," said Henry. "But I'm very impressed."

Jake's shoulders seemed to slump. "I'm worried he won't want it, though, Hank."

Henry saw that this had been bothering Jake in particular, and realized the validity of his fear. He knew, even if Jake didn't, that a denial from Puck would break Jake's heart just as badly, if not in a different way, than Briar's death had.

"He loves you," said Hank, which was not a thought he had had before tonight, but now, was certain it was true. "Formalities aside, he already wants you in his life. Don't forget that."

 ***this chapter has been edited to include correct birthdays. Thanks metz2023!***

 **Hi everyone! Here's the latest chapter, super long by my standards and hopefully moving along at a good pace? I tried to do a few new things in this chapter, including bringing in some of the other characters so that it's less focused on P & S, and getting the plot rolling now that we've established the world and the relationships a bit. I'm trying to decide what characters to use more in future chapters, possibly Red and Daphne or some of the adults, so if there's someone you'd like to see more of, let me know!**

 **Also, I couldn't resist turning Josh and Sabrina into a weird middle school/early high school sort-of-relationship-sort-of-not thing because stuff like that is so typical at that age and I feel like Sabrina would be particularly bad at handling it.**

 **I love that there are so many of you reading this story, and I'd love to hear from more of you about whether or not you like it. This story is super different for me to write than Tales from the Tundra so I'd love some feedback (and thank you to everyone who has reviewed this story already! You guys are the best).**

 **Guest review:**

 **Guest (3/1/18): I can't even tell you how happy getting this review made me. I think it's definitely a really important part of their relationship! So glad someone else agrees!**


	5. Welcome to the Real World

Summer rolled in hot. The end of finals week found Sabrina and her friends oscillating between the community pool that Goldi had installed and Rachel's air-conditioned house. As newly minted sophomores, they were no longer at the bottom of the pecking order and carried a certain spring in their steps.

They were entering the summer with resolutions. Rachel, the only one with a job, had sworn that she'd make out with one of her fellow lifeguards before the summer was out.

"It doesn't matter which one, honestly," Rachel had said one night as they lay side by side in her bed. "But Arianna dared me, and I intend to deliver."

"Aren't all the guys you work with, like, much older than you?" retaliated Maddie from the air mattress on the floor.

"Yeah, that hasn't been a problem in the past," Rachel replied with a smirk.

"Ew," Maddie and Sabrina chorused, while Arianna asked, " _What_ are you insinuating?"

Arianna wanted to read the entire Lord of the Rings series. Maddie wanted a boyfriend.

"What's your resolution, Sabrina?" Rachel asked, hoping to change the topic.

Sabrina's actual summer resolution was to master Snow's flip series. She'd successfully done a backflip a few times with a spotter and a mat, but had yet to do a front flip or aerial without landing flat on her back

But none of them could know what she actually did in the Bad Apples studio. She hesitated, and then the thought popped into her head. "I wanna get back in shape and make the swim team in the fall. I swam at my middle school in the city in seventh grade and it was fun."

"That would be cool. You'd set a ton of records because you'd be, like, the first generation of swimmers in this town," said Arianna.

Sabrina rested her hands on her stomach and thought about this. In the last month of school, her English teacher had called her to her desk.

"You're a swimmer, right?" Mrs. Torpey had asked. Seeing the surprise on Sabrina's face, she'd continued, "You wrote an essay about it for our short story unit."

"Um…yeah," Sabrina replied, looking over her shoulder. Puck was taking his time packing his backpack, no doubt listening in in hopes that she was in trouble.

"I swam in high school," Mrs. Torpey continued, rising and beginning to erase her notes about _The Lord of the Flies_ from the white board. "Ferryport Landing High currently doesn't have a girl's team, and I was thinking about starting one, so I'm just trying to get the word out."

Sabrina raised an eyebrow, unsure of how to answer her. She was so busy with Bad Apples and trying to find the Patchwork Girl and Glass Cat that she couldn't imagine adding a sport into the mix.

"Think about it," Mrs. Torpey said over her shoulder. "It'll be fun, and you know it never hurts to have a sport on your college applications."

Sabrina had mumbled her agreement and then pushed the matter to the back of her mind, because she had a million other things to worry about. But the idea had come out of her mouth while she was desperate for something to say, and now that the words were in the air, she felt good about them.

Who knew, maybe she would do it.

"Maybe I'll do it, too," Rachel said, turning her head. Her pitch black hair spilled onto Sabrina's pillow, so dark that it gleamed blue in the moonlight. "I mean, I'll be at the pool all summer, so it should be easy to drag you down there and then we can do laps!"

Sabrina laughed. "I don't think you, as the lifeguard on duty, are supposed to be doing laps in the pool."

"Anyone wanna train for cross country with me?" Maddie joked half-heartedly. She laughed to herself, and then moaned, "Guys, I want a boyfriend."

Rachel and Sabrina looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"We know," said Rachel darkly.

Arianna, who was much more patient when it came to listening to Maddie's boy problems than the other two, asked, "Is there anyone that you like?"

"I don't know," Maddie groaned. "Aaron Grasso is really nice and I kind of thought things were going somewhere during the school year, but he hasn't texted me back at all this summer."

"Boys are the worst," Sabrina, who had recently ended things with Josh, agreed.

"And I mean, there are a couple of guys who are cute. Like Jack, and Andrew, and Puck. Oh, I would date Puck. Puck is _so_ cute," Maddie continued as if she hadn't spoken.

Sabrina had closed her eyes, but they flew open. Before she could stop herself, she asked, a little harsher than she meant to, "What?"

"What?" Maddie snapped back. "You live with him. Surely you've noticed."

"I'm sure she's noticed. She probably gets to see him shirtless every day, Mads. Maybe she's even seen him in a _towel_ ," said Rachel. Sabrina wasn't sure which one of them she was trying to get a rise out of.

There was a hostile silence. And then Maddie said, her voice almost sour, "Have you?"

"Yeah," Sabrina replied without thinking, suddenly defensive because now she was picturing Maddie and Puck together and feeling oddly nauseous.

"How are things going with Josh?" Arianna asked loudly, in an effort to dispel the tension that was radiating off the two of them.

"Oh, no, that's over," Sabrina said, pushing unbidden images of a shirtless Puck from her mind. "I kind of texted him the other day and broke it off. We never saw each other, really."

"This is why you just make out with them," Rachel explained. "You don't _date_ them."

"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Arianna argued. "Maddie, Sabrina, don't listen to her."

"I never do," Sabrina joked, earning a punch to the arm.

"Oh yeah, Ari? When was the last time you kissed someone?" Rachel asked, sitting up in bed to look down at her.

"Irrelevant," Arianna replied. "But hey, at least my first kiss wasn't next to the dumpster next to the Blue Plate Special!"

And then she ducked into Maddie, who was roaring with laughter, to avoid the pillow that Rachel chucked at her.

"Wait, what?" Sabrina asked when they'd all calmed down. She'd been adopted fairly seamlessly into the friend group in eighth grade, but even still, there were moments and stories that she hadn't been there for, and when they came up she felt like the new girl all over again.

"You heard her right," Rachel confirmed. "The smell was terrible."

"Who? When?"

"Seventh grade. Gary Ross—he was an ninth grader at the time. We'd gone back there to hide from our parents, who were family friends. _Bad_ kisser," Rachel said.

"That story gets me every time," said Maddie, giggling.

"Wait, Sabrina, you've never told us about yours," said Arianna.

"Oh, it was when I was eleven, actually," Sabrina replied, wishing she could tell the story, because it would certainly win out over Rachel's. But she could not, because there were chimpanzees in it, and because it had happened within a magical room that brought the outdoors inside. She thought about telling them that it had been with Puck, because she'd never been able to tell anyone that before, but she hesitated. Even without what Maddie had just said, it was too complicated.

"Eleven? With who?" Arianna pressed.

"Come on, mystery girl," said Rachel, prompting Sabrina to spend several moments staring into space for inspiration.

"It was…this boy from the city," said Sabrina. "We were in the…park, and it just sort of happened. I haven't seen him since I moved."

"Oooh, what's his name?" Arianna asked, whipping out her phone. They all turned their heads away from the bright blue light.

Sabrina's mind spun through her list of old classmates and landed on a completely random name. "Colton Meyer."

"Found him! Found him! Ooh, he's _cute_!"

Sabrina forced a smile, feeling more distant from her friends than ever before, despite the fact that her arm and Rachel's were touching. She felt like a liar and a horrible friend, but what could she do? She had been sworn to secrecy about everything, _everything._

 _Airtight,_ said Robin Hood anytime the subject came up. _Our alibis have to be airtight. If you want to share any information about anything Everafter-related, you must first consult the Council._

 _Alibis for what?_ Sabrina had asked him once, exasperated.

 _Our entire lives, my girl,_ Robin Hood had replied, in such a somber way that not even Sabrina dared argue with him.

If her friends ever came over her house, they either stayed in the living room (Veronica had moved all stacks of incriminating books soon after they'd returned from the city, although once or twice Sabrina had had to shove a wand that Daphne had left lying around into a couch cushion) or in Sabrina's room, which she kept meticulously free of any and all Everafter paraphernalia. All other doors had to remain closed while they were in the house.

They could not know too much about Puck. They were to be kept away from Pinocchio. They were not supposed to talk to Tobias, because non-Everafter children made him nervous. When Sabrina couldn't hang out with her friends because she had Council business to attend to, she lied. When Sabrina went to the Bad Apples studio, she lied. When Sabrina came to school sick and exhausted and miserable because her nightmares were keeping her awake, she lied. When her friends asked her about something as silly and important as her first kiss, she had no choice but to lie.

All of this lying was starting to give Sabrina stomachaches.

"Okay, my ladies, I have cross country practice at 6 am. Goodnight," Maddie declared, rolling over onto her stomach.

Sabrina squeezed her eyes shut, her fingernails digging crescents into her palms as her friend's lighthearted goodnights washed over her. She felt like a stranger, a changeling wearing the skin of a human girl. She wanted to bolt out of bed and run all the way home, but she reminded herself over and over again that this was reality, this was the real world, whether she liked it or not, and she made herself breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, until her racing heart calmed and she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

"Okay, so it's not here, but it can't have gone far," Jake said.

He spun on his heel to address Hank, Veronica, Snow, Puck, and Robin Hood, as if one of them had been hiding the information of where Baba Yaga's house had been this entire trip.

"Did you really think we'd find it after two hours of searching when the Patchwork Girl and Glass Cat have had no luck for months on end?" Henry snapped, sitting down on a stump and pulling out a printout of the picture that Sabrina had taken of the map at Fort Charming.

"But something really large just tripped this sensor," Jake replied with a huff, gesturing to the black box that had been strapped to the tree next to him. "It's not my fault that it took a full hour to drive here."

"Well, we really need to get to Baba Yaga before they do. For all we know, Sabrina is in danger," Veronica said, as if anyone had forgotten.

"We don't know that for sure," Robin Hood argued, like he had the last seven times they'd had this conversation. "All we know is that they're trying to buy Baba Yaga's support. She might not even go for it."

"She'll go for it," said Jake darkly. "The witch always has a price."

"You shouldn't even be here, she hates you!" Henry bellowed, his frustration welling up.

"What was that?" Snow asked in a low voice, straining to hear an odd noise in the distance.

"A little louder please, Hank, I think there's someone in Vermont who didn't _quite_ hear you. Would someone please give my dear brother a snack before he gets hangry enough to kill us all?"

"Shut up! I hear something!" Snow cried, and the brothers fell into a glowering silence. Puck tilted his head to the side, straining so hard to listen that the glamour hiding the pointed tips of his ears flickered in and out.

"It sounds like the house," said Puck, dropping to his knees and putting his hands on the ground to feel for faint vibrations. "Like the house is running."

"Where do you hear it coming from?" asked Henry, doubtful.

Puck jumped to his feet and spun in a circle, then looked up at the sky and back at Jake. "I think I can find it."

"Go on," urged Jake, and Puck unfurled his wings and leapt into the air without a downward glance.

The adults watched him arc gracefully through the sky and then shoot like a rocket towards the looming mountains. Here, out in the foothills of Mount Taurus, there were no humans to see him and have a heart attack.

"Told you he'd be useful," said Jake said out of the corner of his mouth, knowing Puck could hear if he talked any louder.

"I still don't think we should've brought Sabrina," Henry sighed.

"Yeah, well you can deal with her when we get home. She'll be mad at all three of us," Veronica said, rolling her eyes.

The sound of wings stirring the air announced Puck's return. He landed loudly in the bed of their pickup truck, gasping for breath, and pointed.

"The house is about ten kilometers east, hidden in the cliffs!" Puck exclaimed, his eyes bright with adventure. "Let's go!"

"Everybody in the truck," Robin Hood ordered, and they all climbed inside. Puck dropped into a crouch, grabbing onto the side of the truck bed as Snow started the engine and they took off, careening down the narrow path through the woods. They drove for nearly half an hour, tension building as they chased down answers that had been so long in coming. As they neared their destination, Puck breathed in the acrid taste of burning that seemed to accompany the presence of magic and felt a deep flare of excitement and adrenaline.

The other witches could not charge the air the way Baba Yaga did. Not Glinda, not Morgan, and certainly not Daphne. Puck vaulted out of the truck, trusting his own wings to catch him, and flew alongside it until they were in view of the house, when Snow stopped the truck and they all got out to walk.

Puck found it odd to see the house just sitting in the middle of the woods, on top of a bunch of tree trunks that it had definitely flattened, instead of on its path of bones with its many guardians waiting in defense.

The members of the Council joined Puck in a hurried jog up to the front door. It was Henry who was bold enough to knock, and then, when no one answered, to knock again. But it was Jake, who, after waiting in tense silence for several minutes, opened the door.

"Old Mother?" cried Charming.

"Baba Yaga?" Snow added, more quietly. They clustered in the open doorway like a bunch of moths, hesitant to stray away from the light and move deeper into the house.

Puck strained to listen. "She isn't here," he said.

"But you said you just heard the house running," Henry replied.

"I know," Puck said. The two stared at each other for a long moment, and then, on some unspoken agreement, led the way inside.

"Jake, stay here and keep watch," Robin Hood ordered, motioning for the others to follow. "Is anyone else Touched?"

The group began to search for clues as to what had happened to the old crone. In a house as disgusting as this one, it was impossible to tell whether the occupant had been away for three seconds or three years.

Henry knelt to feel around in the fireplace. "The hearth is cold."

"Guys," Veronica said in a low voice, drawing everyone into the kitchen, where there was a paper sitting on the table. It looked, to her trained eye, like a deliberate but hurried placement, like someone had left it behind in a rush, hoping it would be found. The rest of the table was covered in clutter, and there was a small heap of bones on the floor that looked like they _could_ have been swept aside in a hurry to make room. Despite her misgivings, she had a strong hunch, and so she approached and picked it up.

It almost looked like a letter, except it was written in a runic scrawl that certainly was not any kind of human language, let alone one Veronica knew.

"Can anyone read this?"

The paper was passed around, puzzled over, and ultimately pocketed to show to Relda, who knew bits of more languages than all the others combined. The Council members combed the house and left, defeated and teeming with more questions than they'd had upon arrival. Where was Baba Yaga? If she'd gone with the Patchwork Girl, had she been forced?

And what in the world did the Scarlet Hand want with her in the first place?

* * *

"Daph, I can't swim laps here if you're just going to watch me," Sabrina said, pushing herself up out of the pool and sitting on the edge. "It's really creepy."

"Sorry, I'm bored," her sister said with a groan, dropping down to sit with her. She plopped her feet in the water and stared at them moodily.

"Where's Jenna?" Sabrina asked. This past school year, Daphne and Jenna had been nearly inseparable.

Daphne shrugged without looking up from the water. "On vacation. And Red is working on a Council project with Granny, not sure what, but she said they didn't need me."

"When I invited you to come with me, I meant to swim, not watch me swim, dummy. I'm sure Red will tell you what happened when we get home," Sabrina said, and meant it. She was pretty certain Red and Daphne told each other everything.

"Yeah," Daphne sighed. "I just miss school. There was so much to do at school."

Sabrina looked at Daphne like she'd grown an extra head. "You need a hobby."

Suddenly Daphne frowned and squinted across the water to where the lane lines ended and the recreational swimming began. "Who is Puck talking to? Is that Maddie?"

"Oh, yeah," Sabrina said, rolling her eyes. "Maddie totally likes him. It's really annoying."

Daphne gave Sabrina a look so piercing she thought she was being X-rayed. "Why?"

"I have no idea. I don't understand what anyone could ever see in someone so obnoxious and self-centered."

"No," Daphne replied, leaning on the word. "Why is it annoying?"

"Because when Maddie gets a boyfriend she stops talking to us and drops off the planet," Sabrina began with as much dignity as she could muster, leaning away from her younger sister's stare. Then, for added leverage, she added confidently, "And I don't think he likes her back."

Daphne's skeptical silence made Sabrina's stomach twist.

"I'm not too sure about that, 'Brina," Daphne said, after a minute of quiet observation.

The corners of Sabrina's mouth twitched down as she watched them, standing in the deep end underneath Rachel's lifeguard chair, talking and laughing. Even from this distance, Sabrina could see Maddie taking every opportunity to touch him—leaning into his shoulder as she laughed, brushing his arm to swat away an imaginary horsefly—and felt her own skin crawl. Puck's eyes were alight, he was completely engaged in the conversation, no doubt enjoying the attention.

"Wanna go home?" Daphne asked, sympathy twining itself into her offer.

"No," Sabrina said stubbornly, getting to her feet. "I have four more laps."

"I'll go talk to Rachel, then," said Daphne with a sigh. "Come get me when you're done."

Sabrina climbed onto the diving block. She let her eyes stray to Puck and Maddie again, and then dove into the water before she could wonder why Puck was still talking to her, or why she'd for some reason been expecting him to look up and make eye contact with her, like he so often did. Puck was the kind of person who could feel it when someone was watching him.

Her muscles felt like water, but her last four laps were fast, faster than she'd expected, because she was suddenly full of the overwhelming desire to leave the pool and go home. She swam an extra half lap to end closer to her towel, and surfaced, gripping the wall as she gasped for breath.

It wasn't until after she'd wiped the water out of her eyes that she froze, her heart rate, which had finally started to slow, accelerating again. She was here. Beyond the concrete patio where everyone left their towels and beach bags and snacks. Past the chain link fence that encircled the whole pool area so that no one could get in without a pass. There, standing in the dense assemblage of towering trees that kept watch over everything in Ferryport Landing.

Sabrina stared into the beady black eyes of the Patchwork Girl. She was buried deep enough into the woods that no once else seemed to have noticed her yet.

The Patchwork Girl stared back, unblinking, and then took one single step backward.

As if a spell had been broken, Sabrina vaulted out of the pool and sprinted toward the fence, water streaming off her in rivulets. Her mind was going a mile a minute. She had no clue what she was going to do, or say, all she knew was that she wanted to grab the Patchwork Girl and shake her, interrogate her.

There was a gate that only opened from the inside nearby. Sabrina reached it and fumbled for the latch before pushing it open. The Patchwork Girl was no longer in view, and Sabrina was about to run blindly into the forest, before she realized that she had no shoes on, and also that this could be a trap.

Trap. This could be a trap.

Sabrina stumbled backwards, into the chain link fence, just as Puck and Daphne approached it from the inside, the former also dripping. Daphne must have pulled him out of the water. Sabrina was shocked Maddie hadn't followed.

"Sabrina!" Daphne cried. "What's going on?"

Sabrina whirled around to face them, her gaze landing on Puck, who would understand. "She was here. She was watching me."

"Who?" Daphne demanded.

Puck's mouth turned itself a very thin line. "You should get back inside the fence."

"Don't tell me what to do. I'm going after her."

"Who?" Daphne insisted.

Puck and Sabrina both looked at her, and Daphne knew immediately that they were not allowed to tell her.

"Call Mom. Tell her she's here. Tell her I'm going after her."

"Sabrina, wait," said Puck, and Sabrina was about to yell at him for trying to order her around when he added, "I'm coming. I'll grab our shoes."

"Daphne, stay here," Puck commanded a minute later, and then Daphne was alone, digging her fingernails into her arm as she waited for the phone to ring, watching the dynamic duo of Sabrina and Puck disappear into foliage.

The Patchwork Girl had left a trail that was easy to track for about five minutes, until it abruptly disappeared. Puck stopped short.

"Where did she go?"

Sabrina thought back to the time Canis had tricked her and Daphne by climbing a tree and traveling through the branches. She looked up and around but saw no evidence that the same thing had happened here.

She looked back the way they'd come and jumped, and then grabbed Puck's arm and gave it a painful squeeze.

Puck turned around. The Patchwork Girl was standing behind them, a horrifying splash of primary colors against the mellow greens and browns of the forest. How she'd gotten there, neither Puck nor Sabrina knew, and they also didn't quite have a plan as to what to do now that they'd found her. They were, after all, wearing only swimsuits and had no backup or weapons.

Without releasing her death grip on Puck's arm, Sabrina spoke. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

The Patchwork Girl's head swiveled from side to side, as if to make sure they were truly alone.

"Tell your family to drop the case," said the Patchwork Girl in a low voice. "Leave the Scarlet Hand alone, or your situation will become much worse."

She took a threatening step forward, and Puck instinctively reached over to grab Sabrina's other arm.

"What are you and the Glass Cat doing in Ferryport Landing?" Puck asked.

The Patchwork Girl's face remained expressionless. "Ferryport Landing was the end. Ferryport Landing will be the new beginning."

"The beginning of what?" Sabrina demanded.

"Go home, Grimms. Run back to New York City. This will be your only warning."

"Why did you take Baba Yaga?" Sabrina yelled.

Instead of answering them, the Patchwork Girl flickered like an apparition. Puck and Sabrina glanced at each other, and then, as if they'd been given a cue, let go of each other and started running toward her.

By the time they reached the Patchwork Girl, she had vanished on the spot, nothing more than a vapor in the breeze. They looked everywhere, terrified and hoping she would appear again, until Veronica and Jake joined them in the woods, but it was like the Patchwork Girl had never been there to begin with.

* * *

"Well? It's been two hours," asked Red a week and a half later, watching Daphne peer through the crack she'd made in the blinds.

Most of the adults were out on secret Council business that Daphne and Red were not allowed to know about. After the scare with the Patchwork Girl at the pool, the two girls had been filled in with the bare minimum amount of information. Now, Daphne had more questions than before and was more frustrated than ever. She stepped back from the window. "No sign of them."

They both turned around at a sudden loud noise to see Sabrina running down the stairs. She'd slung her bag over her shoulder and had a look of cold determination on her face that almost stunned Daphne into silence—almost. She jumped at the opportunity.

"Sabrina! We didn't realize you were home! Where is everyone? Where are you going?"

"Out. Don't worry about it," Sabrina said, and then the door was open and closed with a snap behind her.

Red let out a disgruntled sigh as Daphne lifted the blinds again to watch her sister hop into Snow's pickup truck.

"Well, that's confusing. Anyway," Daphne said, turning on her heel. "How long has Granny been in the Meeting Room?"

"About fifteen minutes, I think. Let's get to the bottom this while no one's paying attention to us."

The girls tiptoed up the stairs and crept down the hallway, holding their breath instinctively as they passed the Meeting Room. They paused outside the door to Granny's room. Daphne steeled herself and then quietly turned the knob on Granny's bedroom door. It was well known that Granny's bedroom was off limits, but Daphne was desperate enough break that rule.

Daphne and Red froze in her doorway, staring at the room that was, as always, adorned with tribal masks, old pictures from various travels, and strange artifacts, some magical and others from human villages and civilizations around the world. But Daphne's eyes fell to her grandmother's private bookshelf. She tiptoed across the room and skimmed the shelves, slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of books Granny had that no one else had access to. She started to pull different books out, inspecting the covers and flipping open to random pages. Most books were benign—cookbooks and spellbooks that used to sit in stacks in the living room—until Daphne picked up a book that had a pale yellow sticky note protruding from its pages. Its soft brown cover had no title or other defining feature.

Behind her, Red's sock feet whispered across the floor from the closet to Granny's bed. Daphne held her breath as she flipped the book open to the marked page, frowning and sighing in frustration when she saw that it was nothing but a scramble of letters, like someone had taken the entire alphabet in their hands and scattered it across a sheet of paper.

"What _is_ this? Why does Granny have a page of straight nonsense on this bookmarked?"

"Whoa," said Red in a low voice.

Daphne, flipped through pages, replied distractedly, "What?"

"Is it the same nonsense as this? This…this isn't even English," said Red, and then handed Daphne the sheet she'd found on Granny's nightstand.

Daphne glanced down at the aged piece of paper, even more perplexed than she had been, because this letter was written, clear as day, in English, although the handwriting was worse than Puck's.

"Yes it is," Daphne argued, frowning.

"Daph, it isn't," Red replied, raising her eyebrows.

The two girls stared each other down, trying to figure out who was wrong. The paper seemed to slip in Daphne's clammy hands. She looked down at it like it had called to her, skimmed the first few words, swallowed hard, and then said in a much quieter voice, "It's addressed to me."

Red's eyes widened in fear. "What are you talking about?"

Daphne cleared her throat, which had been sticking to itself, and read, _"Morgan, Bunny, or Daphne—one of you will find this. There is a shadow that is rolling over town, a shadow we fragmented with war and the fall of the barrier that has finally coalesced again. Maybe you've sensed it too. I have no interest in Everafter conflict. I do not know who has been calling me but I will go with them, they have been following me and I might as well see what they want. They will come for you next. You've been warned. I do not think you can fight them and win, but if you want to try, look at the trunk I left at our first meeting place. Send me a sign by fire to call me back."_

Daphne's skin crawled. She creased the letter and wiped beads of sweat from her forehead.

Red was trembling. "Who wrote it? Why can't I read it?"

The words came from Daphne's throat with the force of a storm, like they'd been summoned by some external power. "Baba Yaga."

And then Daphne put two and two together, turned on her heel, and ran down the hallway. She hammered on the Meeting Room door until Granny opened it, her features creased in consternation.

" _Liebling,_ what's going—" she began, and then Daphne shook the letter, and her expression turned stern. "What were you doing in my room?"

There was no time for apologies. Daphne stumbled past her, her heart beating so fast that she thought she might be sick. "Why didn't you show me this? It's addressed to me."

Granny froze, her hand on the doorknob, and Red slipped past her into the room, unnoticed. "No one in the Council has been able to figure out what language that letter is written in."

Daphne swallowed hard. "It's written in the Old Language of Warlocks. One of the first things the Coven taught me was how to read it. Once you can read it, it becomes indistinguishable from your native tongue."

Like a thundercloud, her words hung in the air between them. Her voice sounded like it was coming from someone else, someone who was very far away. Her heart beat several loud, aggressive times before Granny was able to compose herself. She shut the door with all the dignity she could muster, straightened her sunflower hat, and turned to her youngest granddaughter.

Daphne, only eleven, tall for her age but so often overshadowed by her older sister. She still wore clothes that were bright and colorful and styled her hair in braids. She was always the cheerful and innocent one, unfazed by the horrors she'd undergone in her youth that Sabrina had so diligently sheltered her from.

Except right now she looked like her father, stern and solemn, a storm in her eyes that made her look like she'd aged a thousand years. Relda had not once stopped to consider that Daphne might hold the answers to their most difficult questions.

Relda blinked, a million suggestions for how to proceed offering themselves to her. She should apologize, but for what? For allowing Daphne to be cast aside, left out of the conversation like a worthless child? Or for forgetting that Daphne was growing not only into herself, but also, according to Morgan, into one of the strongest young witches she'd ever known?

She should scold her for breaking into her bedroom. Or tell her that maybe she was wrong about leaving Daphne out of the loop. Or thank her for deciphering that blasted letter that had confused everyone else in the house for weeks. Or hug her, because the poor girl looked absolutely terrified.

Burning curiosity, so characteristic of the Grimm family, won out.

"What does it say?"

And that was how Puck found himself left alone with Basil in the early hours of the next morning while Relda, Tobias, Veronica, Jake, Morgan le Fay, Daphne, and Red went to find the trunk that Baba Yaga mentioned in her letter.

"Puck, can I give Elvis a carrot? I don't want them, they hurt my wiggly tooth."

"Sure, bud," Puck said, and watched Basil croon to the family dog before slipping him a baby carrot. At the great age of five, Basil loved Elvis almost as much as Daphne did. "But you know, if you bite down hard enough, you might just get a visit from the Tooth Fairy tonight."

Basil rolled his eyes and smirked, then flashed Puck a smile that displayed the many, many gaping holes between his teeth.

"The Tooth Fairy isn't real," the little boy said matter-of-factly, giving Elvis another kiss. "Tommy told me that at camp."

"Baz, I've met the Tooth Fairy," said Puck, reaching across the table to steal a raisin. "She would very offended if she heard you say things like that."

Basil's green eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Really," Puck confirmed, trying to recall the memories he had of their meeting. "You know what the Tooth Fairy likes? Kids who eat carrots and raisins."

Puck had blurry memories of being five, slightly clearer memories of Mustardseed, who was once-upon-a-time four years his junior, being five. Unlike Basil, who had Daphne's sweet disposition and seemed to be developing Sabrina's sense of sarcasm, they'd both been tiny terrors.

"When's your birthday?" asked Basil, who was the exact opposite of a tiny terror. He'd been obsessed with birthdays recently, because he was so excited to finally be old enough to go to Kindergarten. "I want to make you a present."

Puck forced a smile, feeling his stomach twist. "It's a secret."

"Why?" Basil asked with a quizzical frown. "I'll tell you when my birthday is."

"That's a very nice offer," said Puck, picking up one of Basil's carrots and then setting it back down. "But I can't tell you."

"I bet I can guess it."

"I highly doubt that," said Puck with a hollow laugh, trying not to feel uncomfortable. "So, what do you wanna do now?"

Luckily, this tactic worked. Basil dropped the carrot he was holding and said, "Can we throw water balloons off the roof again?"

"No, not today. Your mom would kill me," said Puck with a grin. Sometimes he thought that Basil might be picking up some mischievous tendencies from him as well.

The corners of Basil's mouth twitched up. "Can I see your room?"

Puck laughed and hopped to his feet. "Come on, pipsqueak. Let's go play football."

Basil's smile was a constellation of stars. He leapt out of his chair as well and followed Puck out the front door into the hot sunshine.

When Veronica had first left Puck to babysit Basil, he'd panicked and taken him up to the roof to throw water balloons, then let him eat a whole sleeve of cookies. She'd scolded him harshly afterwards, and Puck had been flabbergasted when she'd asked him to babysit again, instead of dragging him with her to the store. It was not something Titania would have done.

Puck had now been left alone with Basil enough times that he now genuinely enjoyed watching him. What with the fact that Puck was still growing, and the people he knew kept getting older and older, it was refreshing to act like a kid again. Because that was all he was to Basil, who knew absolutely nothing about Puck's true identity, much less his own.

Basil liked throwing the ball back and forth, but it was unquestionable that his favorite part of "playing football" was attempting to tackle Puck. He would throw himself at the older boy and clench his shirt in his small fists, or sit on Puck's foot and wrap his arms and legs around Puck's leg so that he couldn't walk. It was hilarious, worth being left behind while the adult members of the Council went on a mission.

They ran around the yard for a while, sweating in the early July heat, until Jake's Jeep pulled into the driveway.

"Uncle Jake!" Basil cried, sprinting across the lawn. Puck raced after him, grabbed the little boy under the armpits, and swung in him away from the driveway while Uncle Jake turned the car around and put it in park.

"What did your mom say about staying away from moving cars?" Puck asked in a stern voice. Basil had the decency to look abashed for half a second before calling after Jake again as he hopped out of the driver's seat and strode towards them. Veronica's CRV rolled in behind them. Puck did a head count of family members through the tinted windows—whatever had happened out there, everyone had made it home.

"My two favorite boys!" Jake said, crouching down to absorb Basil's aggressive hug. As he passed Puck, he clapped him on the shoulder and said in a low voice, "We need to talk to you."

Puck narrowed his eyes, trying to read Jake's expression. "Any luck?"

Jake winked, but his face seemed drawn.

"In the kitchen," said Veronica, who had appeared from the CRV alongside Relda. Basil was already clinging to her hand. "Did you have fun with Puck, honey?"

"We played football," Basil told her, putting a strange emphasis on the word _football_ that neither Puck nor Veronica understood.

"Awesome," Veronica said anyways, mouthing _thank you_ at Puck as she walked Basil into the house. "Let's see what's on TV, okay?"

Once Basil had been set up in front of the television in the living room, Jake, Veronica, Robin Hood, Relda, and Puck congregated in the kitchen.

"What was in the trunk?" Puck asked in a low voice so that the five-year-old would not overhear.

Jake pressed his lips together. "A bunch of random crap, to be honest. Daphne and Morgan seemed to understand what she'd left behind, so they're going to look it over with Bunny the next time they get together. But it seems as if Baba Yaga knew she was being followed for some time, and has been storing things in this trunk in preparation. Which makes us think that wherever she went, it wasn't by force. She chose when to go and how."

"But did she actually go with the Patchwork Girl, if the Patchwork Girl found Sabrina and I the other day?"

"We think so. Which means someone else would be supervising her. If and when we see her again, the crone will have all sorts of valuable information."

"Morgan is investigating some Everafter disturbances around the continent. We're hoping that one of them will give us a lead as to where Baba Yaga was taken, and then what they want from her. In the meantime, we have another problem," Veronica added as the kitchen door swung open and Sabrina walked in, raising her eyebrows at the sight of them huddled together.

"What's going on?" Sabrina asked.

"Hi, honey," said Veronica. "How was Rachel's?"

"Good," Sabrina mumbled, her face flushing as if this was information she didn't want other people to know.

"What's the other problem?" Puck continued as if they hadn't been interrupted. Sabrina squeezed behind him to open a cabinet. She grabbed a granola bar from the box and turned around to join the conversation, peeling the wrapper off and taking a bite.

Robin Hood said, "What the Patchwork Girl said to you two, about Ferryport Landing being the new beginning. Clearly, our town is being targeted. It means that we've been doing a good job keeping the Council under wraps, but it also means the Scarlet Hand thinks Ferryport Landing is unprotected."

Puck raised an eyebrow. "And?"

" _And_ its time to go political. We declassify some projects. We make the Council itself public," said Relda. "We have to show the Scarlet Hand that we, too, have reorganized since the war."

Sabrina's jaw went slack. " _Public?_ You mean like, tell people what we're doing?"

While she was distracted, Puck reached over and grabbed the half-eaten granola bar out of her hand. Before she could protest, he took a bite. Sabrina gave him a murderous glare and then turned back to the cabinet to get another one.

"But I thought we wanted to avoid doing that, so that the humans don't find out," Puck said, turning to Jake as he chewed. "You told me the other day that we aren't strong enough yet to show the other Everafters that we can work together."

Jake shook his head, leaning against the counter. "I know, bud. And I still think that. But our hand has been forced. If we don't make a move, and we also don't go crawling back to the City like the Patchwork Girl suggested, then we seem vulnerable to an attack."

"We need to find a way to call all of the town's Everafters together without the humans catching on," Robin Hood continued. "Puck, do you know how Titania and Oberon used to get the Empire State Building to turn colors?"

Jake watched Puck's face shutter closed. "No."

"Any idea as to how they got all the Everafters to know to watch for that signal?"

"No," Puck repeated.

Jake nudged Robin Hood and said loudly, "Maybe there's something in one of the old Grimm journals about it. Why don't we all look?"

Puck turned on his heel and walked towards the door. "I'll watch Basil," he snapped as he left the kitchen. It was less of an offer than a demand.

"What was that about?" asked Robin Hood, and was taken aback when the Grimm family seemed to let out a collective sigh.

"He doesn't like talking about Faerie. Or even thinking about it," Jake explained. "I'll go talk to him, but we might want to leave him out of this."

Puck didn't interact with anyone as the day wore on. He stayed with Basil for a few hours, then shut himself in his room to "make a phone call". The adults assumed he was just sulking, but Sabrina knew he was talking to Maddie—her friend had been sending regular updates about their conversation to their group chat. Sabrina tried her best to ignore the texts.

Dinner was a subdued affair. It was the first time in a while that everyone was home, even Henry, who was arriving back from a week-long business trip. Instead of going in full-time on the Council like Veronica and Jake, Hank had chosen to get a job working for a Cybersecurity company. He mostly worked from home, but every few months had to fly to Chicago for business meetings. Hank and Daphne kept up a stream of conversation for a while, but eventually Puck's sullen mood cast a cloud that dampened even that.

Jake, who had disappeared for the entire afternoon and returned only in time to eat, was also acting abnormal. He was antsy and distracted, simultaneously unable to sit still or focus on the conversation. Once dinner was over, he went upstairs, ordering everyone to stay in the general area.

He came back down a few minutes later clutching a manila envelope.

"Puck," Uncle Jake said in a funny voice. "Could you come in here for a minute? I have something I want to show you."

Sabrina, who had been mindlessly channel surfing with Daphne and Pinocchio, looked up as Puck slunk into the dining room from the kitchen, where he'd been washing the dishes with Red.

"What is it?" Puck grumbled.

Uncle Jake tapped the envelope he was holding, a slow, nervous grin spreading across his face.

"Open it."

And he thrust the envelope at Puck, who snatched it from his hands. He half turned away from the rest of the household, who had stopped doing their various activities and gathered around the table to watch the proceedings.

Puck pulled a thick piece of paper out and stared at it for a moment before looking up at Jake, then back down at the paper, then back up, his eyes as wide as saucers, his voice nothing more than a whisper. "What is this?"

"Uh," Uncle Jake said, pushing his hair out of his face. "Well, I knew that you were upset because we can celebrate everyone else's birthday, but not yours because we didn't know when it was."

"I wasn't upset—" Puck began to argue, now unable to tear his eyes away from the paper he was staring at.

"—so I made a few calls, it took a while, actually, I had to go through several fairy godfathers and then several different medics, since I'm fairly certain that Cobweb delivered you and obviously he's gone, but eventually someone found the records, and it turns out that tomorrow…well, I've know for a few weeks but, tomorrow is your birthday, Puck."

Puck felt goosebumps rise on his arms. Sabrina watched him mouth the word and then looked up at Jake with a look on his face that was full of more emotion that Sabrina thought he was capable of having.

Jake looked like he was trying very hard not to get teary-eyed himself. "And so my first present to you, Puck, is a birth certificate. With it you're registered in the human world and you'll be able to get real copies of things—a driver's license, a passport, maybe even a house, one day."

Puck couldn't speak. He reached up with his other hand and ran a finger over his name where it was written.

 _Robin Brendin Goodfellow_.

"How…how did you find out my middle name?" He asked when he'd regained his voice. "I never told anyone. Because it literally means _heir to the king_ in Gaelic."

Usually a sentence like this would bring bitterness into Puck's voice, but he was too overcome to sound anything but grateful.

"I made a _lot_ of calls," Jake said with a choked-up laugh.

"I can't believe you did this," Puck whispered, turned back to the sheet of paper, devouring phrase after phrase with his eyes.

 _Born 9:13 am,_ _7_ _th_ _July_

 _To Allan and Teresa Goodfellow_

 _State of Maryland_

 _Star Island Hospital_

Jake spoke again, answering the questions that Puck had before he could voice them.

"The time and day are align with Faerie's records. And Star Island hospital in Maryland closed down in 2004, so it seemed perfect, especially because the name is close to the island where you were actually born," Jake said. "And I didn't want to use Oberon and Titania's real names, just in case, especially because in the eyes of the system you're an orphan, so I picked names that were close. And the year is 2003 because I figure you're fourteen now, and…tomorrow is your fifteenth birthday. Welcome to the real world, bud."

 **A/N: I hope everyone is having a good summer, and I hope you like this chapter! This story is proving more and more difficult for me to write, I think because there are so many different characters and I'm trying to cover such a long period of time. I didn't expect this chapter to end up being different interactions between different characters, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I hope you all liked it! I'm not sure yet if this story will just end up being really long, or if I'll make a "part 2" and skip a year or something. Please leave a review if you have time! And thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, getting reviews makes my day!**

 **Guest reviews:**

 **Guest 5/14/18: Thank you, I really appreciate that! I've actually had some thoughts about doing a fanfic on P & S at that age, because I think it would be fun to write about their life with Emma and Alison! Maybe I will after this story!**

 **Guest 5/16/18: Sorry to keep you waiting for so long haha! I hope you like this chapter!**

 **Guest 6/17/18: Thank you! I hope you like this update!**

 **I12Bfree: I'm so glad you like this fic! And I'm really glad that someone else likes the Jake and Puck relationship, I think they're a great pair! You inspired me to put the birth certificate scene in this chapter, so thanks for reviewing!**

 **Guest 7/28/18: Thank you so much for your kind review, I loved reading it!**


	6. A Threat from the Shadows

Sabrina paced back and forth backstage, twisting her hands, trying to force down the wrath of nausea in her stomach that had prevented her from eating more than an apple and a handful of goldfish past 4 PM.

Puck, who sat perched atop one of the high beams of the backstage catwalk, called down to her, "We don't have to be here, you know."

"Yes, we do," Sabrina grumbled under her breath, because of course he could hear her. After spending the majority of the month of July and a decent portion of August tracking down Everafters who had left the town, going door to door with invitations and informational packets, and spending hours in the Meeting Room planning speeches and preparing for possible setbacks, of course they couldn't bail. They'd wanted to be a part of this. They'd fought to be included. And now Sabrina wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl into her bed.

Red, who was sitting in a corner with her knees curled into her chest, looked even worse than Sabrina felt. "Wait, we can go home?"

Sabrina rubbed her temples and blew out a deep, calming breath as Daphne came running in from the hallway, followed by an irritated-looking Pinocchio.

"You guys, there's so, so many people out there! I had to ask Snow if we knew _for sure_ that there weren't any mortals mixed in, and then she started to explain all the different protections they'd place over this place, and I thought, no way could a human get in here," Daphne chattered, peeking out the heavy curtains to the auditorium beyond.

"Yes, the mayor's mansion has been under special protection ever since the barrier dropped, and they've added extra for tonight." Sabrina replied, suddenly feeling desperate for water. "And don't say human like that, Daphne, are you forgetting what we are?"

Flushing, Daphne replied, "You know what I mean, 'Brina. You don't have to be so flustered, this is going to be completely fine. "

Turning on her heel to pace away from Daphne, Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I'm not flustered, I'm just preparing for the worst."

"Which is?" Daphne challenged.

Puck dropped from the beam and landed catlike on the ground between Sabrina and Daphne. When it was clear Sabrina wasn't going to answer, he replied, "Well Marshmallow, that would be, you know, the townsfolk rioting and declaring that we have done wrong by the Everafter community by creating a Council without input, one that's mainly a group of Grimms. Your family has been immortal for, what, four years? And hated for what, hundreds?"

Stepping back in reflex to Puck's tone, Daphne wrinkled her nose and then frowned. "Wow, Puck, way to be a total buzzkill. I'm going to go see if Snow needs anything."

She stormed past Puck and Sabrina back into the hallway. Scowling, Sabrina turned to Puck. "You didn't have to say that, Gasbag."

"We were both thinking it," Puck said irritatingly. They glared at each other. Sabrina had had a massive growth spurt over the summer and they were once again the same height, 5'8". It was somewhat of a relief to Sabrina, as if added height had given Puck some advantage over her, but she knew it wouldn't last.

"It could've been worse," Pinocchio added helpfully. "He could've mentioned that that we're seriously outnumbered. Daphne needs to stay back here, with us, where there's extra protection."

"Yeah, Pinocchio, but at least you know not to _say that to her._ You're such a jerk," Sabrina hissed to Puck.

"Oh, chill out, both of you, I wasn't trying to upset—"

Their bickering was interrupted by the door as Hank sidled in with Basil, who was asleep in his arms.

"Two minutes until 9," Hank whispered after checking his watch. This was the first time since they'd gone to New York City for Christmas that the Grimm household was completely empty. What with everything that had happened in the past several years, no one trusted Basil to a babysitter, despite the late hour.

"Will he stay asleep?" Sabrina whispered back, nodding towards Basil. "It could get loud out there."

"I brought my tablet and his headphones," Hank murmured, turning so the kids could see the tiny, Basil-sized backpack he was wearing. "Worst comes to worst we turn on Paw Patrol. Where's your sister?"

"She went to go talk to Snow," Sabrina replied in her muted half-voice.

Hank ducked around Pinocchio to glimpse the stage. "Well, Snow's out there."

"Aaaaand… there's Daph," Puck added as Daphne bounded out from the opposite wing and approached Snow. Basil groaned in Henry's arms and turned his head, pressing his small nose into his fathers collarbone.

Hank pursed his lips, bouncing up and down to lull Basil back to sleep. "Somebody go get her, please."

Sabrina took a step toward the stage, but Pinocchio shook his head. "Not you, she's mad at you. Or you!"

Pinocchio waved a stern arm at Puck and then strode out to retrieve the middle Grimm child from the stage.

"What happened?" Hank mouthed, shooting a disappointed look first at Sabrina and then at Puck, who both avoided his gaze. He was then distracted by the reappearance of Daphne, and reached out with his free arm to make sure she was okay. "I want all of you moving in pairs tonight, understood? There's a lot of powerful people here."

"Dad, everything's fine, why are you so nervous?" Daphne said, shaking him off. "Come on, we need to listen, Snow's about to start talking."

"I have to watch Basil," Hank replied, now unable to take his eyes off of Veronica, who had joined Snow on stage from the other wing.

"I can take him, Henry," Red offered. "I don't really want to hear this."

"Oh, all right," said Hank, almost reluctantly. He handed Basil off, set down the backpack, and joined the cluster of kids who had gathered in the heavy folds of curtain separating them from the stage, where Snow, Robin Hood, Veronica, and Little John were all waiting. The front row was filled with Council members. Sabrina could tell from afar that they were all tense, not speaking to one another, but occasionally glancing over their shoulders as if they expected some danger to reveal itself in loud auditorium. Sabrina could see that Granny had her current Grimm journal in her lap, ready to take notes, and Mordred sat with his laptop at his feet like a security blanket. The mayor's mansion's auditorium was not large, with only eight rows of chairs and one door at the back, and the small size of the room made it seemed more packed than it was. Everafters milled about, chattering to one another and eating the cheese and crackers that Pinocchio and Tobias had set up in the lobby. Although everything seemed calm so far, this was Ferryport Landing, and Sabrina didn't believe for a second that they'd all get through this unscathed. There were Everafters here who Sabrina found untrustworthy, including some who had once been members of the Scarlet Hand.

 _That was why they were doing this,_ she reminded herself as her blood pressure started to rise. _To show both old members of the Scarlet Hand and people who were on our side that there's a way to happiness that isn't violence and division._

The four founding members stood on the stage stood in a tight circle, speaking in low voices. Sabrina could see the tension in her mother's shoulders that kept her back ramrod straight. Little John was chewing on the end of his pen and Robin Hood kept reaching up to smooth his slicked back hair or straighten his blazer, clearly uncomfortable in the business casual outfit he was wearing. Snow, the only one who carried the semblance of calm, finally stepped up to the microphone.

"Good evening, Everafters of Ferryport Landing. We thank you kindly for joining us tonight, especially those of you who have traveled from your homes out of the state to hear what we have to say. You know a bit about the idea we're proposing to you tonight, the creation of the Council of Everafter, from the letters we've sent to you, but tonight we're giving you more information and the opportunity to ask questions, so please feel free to stand and interrupt me if you have them. Please, find your seats."

Snow stood still in front of the microphone, smiling serenely as the audience members jostled each other to get back to the seats they'd claimed. The harsh stage lights shimmered off her hair, drawing out glints of blue and red. Sabrina could see why they'd picked her to speak first. If these people would elect her to be their mayor, they would listen to her now.

The backstage door opened once more and Charming appeared, giving them a tight smile as he joined them in the curtains.

"I couldn't just sit in the audience and watch her from afar," Charming whispered, patting Hank on the shoulder in a way of greeting. Before he lowered his arm, Sabrina noticed the handle of a knife sticking out of his waistband and grimaced, relieved that she was not the only one who felt like this might go south.

Once the noise in the auditorium died down, Snow continued, "It's been three years since the fall of the barrier. Three years that we've been free to come and go. While many of us have chosen to remain or return to Ferryport Landing in the interest of living near other people who understand us, many others now live as far away as Colorado and California. Either way, I think we've all learned in the past three years how different the world is than when we sailed to America so long ago. We now live in a world of advanced human technology, a world where it's much harder to hide our true natures than it once was."

Snow, as planned, fell silent for several moments to let her words settle in. There were mutters in the audience. Someone coughed. Behind the curtain, Sabrina and Daphne shared a nervous look. Puck let out a shaky breath and shifted from one foot to the other behind them.

"After the barrier fell, Robin Hood came to see me and said, what's going to happen to us now? Will some of us be irresponsible? Reckless? Are the mortals finally going to discover us, changing our peaceful lives forever? Do we have any sort of rules or regulations in place to stop that from happening? Do we have a plan if we are discovered?"

The muttering in the audience, a steady current of uncertain chatter running beneath Snow's words, stopped.

"And so that became our first and second order of business. One, figure out a set of guidelines for Everafters to follow when it comes to secrecy, and figure out how to distribute them. Two, develop a plan in case we are all outed. Along the way we realized another problem. None of us are registered in the human system. We might be free, but we can't legally obtain driver's licenses, passports. We can't legally travel. We don't have birth certificates—which are very important in the mortal world for proving your identity—or even a way around the fact that we do not age. And so we drew up our third, and most important item on the agenda. We would do everything in our power to set up a network for Everafters to safely get those materials. Passports, birth certificates. We would set up programs to send our children to college. We would raise our own generation of doctors, scientists, and thinkers," Snow continued. As an afterthought, she added, "Dentists, even, who don't try to pull everyone's teeth out."

There were titters in the audience. Sabrina thought of the one time she'd visited Frau Pfefferkuchenhaus and shuddered.

"But we knew we could not make these decisions alone. After all, we were not the only people impacted by the fall of the barrier. We realized that we needed a place where Everafters could make these decisions, who could help us come to shared decisions about secrecy and freedom. And so we created the Council of Everafter, with the specific aim of recruiting residents of Ferryport Landing who want to help others navigate this new, post-barrier world."

In the audience, a girl stood. Sabrina recognized her, Bella Amphibian. Her father, the Frog Prince, sat beside her. Sabrina had not seen either of them since the war. Staring at the girl who had once been her friend and once tried to kill her, Sabrina felt sweat bead her forehead. Bella was like a living reminder that, no matter how much she wanted to, Sabrina couldn't trust anyone, not really.

"What do you plan on doing to the people who don't want to follow your rules?"

They'd prepared Snow for this question. "Although that will eventually be up to the Council members in charge of that agenda item, we anticipate that consequences would include revoking things we give out, like passports. Secrecy and freedom are our collective responsibility. If you blow your cover, you blow everyone's cover. The reason we're having this meeting is to make it clear that these guidelines we create will be a collaborative effort. Everyone is welcome to join the committee focused on agenda item #1, headed by Robin Hood. He'll speak more in a little bit. You can contact him after the meeting if you're interested."

Seemingly satisfied, Bella sat. Sabrina did not relax.

Before Snow could continue speaking, Goldilocks stood, all the way on the other side of the room. "You guys have a plan for getting us passports and birth certificates?"

"Yes, it involves refurbishing our town's hospital," Snow said. "That's all I can say for now, but Veronica Grimm, who is in charge of agenda item #3, is making great progress."

In the back, a woman who was not seated but rather leaning against the wall near the door, spoke in a loud, clear voice. "Why is there a Grimm in charge of an Everafter matter? Isn't this what got the Ferryport Landing Everafters trapped in the first place?"

There were approving mutters in the background.

Snow looked at Veronica. Puck felt the entire remainder of the Grimm family tense up beside him. Daphne reached out and grabbed her father's hand.

Veronica took Snow's place at the microphone. "We were waiting to make this announcement, but I suppose now is as a good a time as any. In the interest of keeping you all informed, it's important that you know that my family and I, all of us, are Everafters. Making us Everafters was a strategical tactic that someone else employed during the war, to trap Mirror inside the barrier while he was inhabiting Relda's body. This was done without the knowledge of my family, and it is irreversible. So we are a part of your community now. We are Everafters."

Sabrina, whose hands had jumped up towards her ears in preparation for the angry shouts that were sure to follow such an announcement, was shocked when only stunned silence followed.

The woman, shrouded in darkness, spoke again. "The Grimm family…is immortal?"

"That's correct, yes," replied Snow, who had regained control of the microphone. She squinted into the audience again, clearly confused as to who was speaking. Snow was silent for a moment, watching the woman, and then picked up again where she left off.

Pinocchio turned to the others. "Why did she say 'Ferryport Landing Everafters' like that? Puck, can you make out who that is?"

Puck, who had been staring into the gloom of the auditorium as if transfixed, replied, "No…I can't make out her face. It's almost like she's using a glamour. A strong one."

They exchanged tense looks. Sabrina's skin crawled. "Why would she need a glamour?"

Puck shook his head, his eyes boring into the woman. "I don't like it."

"And there's something else," Snow was saying. "The true reason that we gathered you all here tonight. Although it is not one of the reasons the Council was originally formed, certain events have recently come to light that has made it clear to us that we will be needed for a bigger purpose. The fourth and most dangerous item on the agenda of the Council of Everafter."

Snow, for a moment, seemed to lose her confidence. She took a deep breath, changed her grip on the microphone, and said, "The Scarlet Hand has returned."

At this, the startled yells Sabrina had braced herself for came. She flinched away from the curtain, the nausea that she'd been staving off making a vicious attack.

"They have already made several plays at the Grimms and other members of our community. Baba Yaga is missing, and it is assumed she was captured by them," Snow continued after the cacophony subsided. "Once upon a time the Scarlet Hand divided us. We are here to do everything in our power to make sure that does not happen again."

Everyone backstage turned as the door opened once more and Morgan le Faye sidled in. The appearance of Morgan, who was supposed to be on patrol, was not a good sign.

"Hey," she hissed. "We have a problem. There's something outside the mansion. I need some of you to come with me and check it out."

"I will," Daphne whispered.

Morgan shook her head. "Not you, small one. I need you to stay here in case you need to uphold the protective spells. You have the wand?"

Daphne nodded, a look of determination on her face.

"You remember the spell?"

Daphne nodded again.

"Good," Morgan replied. "Hank, Sabrina, Puck, come with me, quickly."

The three followed without argument. It was a relief to be out of the stuffy auditorium, away from the lights and the horde of people. On their way out, Hank said to Pinocchio, "You're in charge of Basil and Daphne."

They strode down the back hallway behind the auditorium, Sabrina nearly jogging to keep up with Morgan.

"I sensed something outside the building," Morgan explained. "Something powerful, strong. I could've gone outside to inspect it but I just don't think we should be running off alone with an unknown threat lurking."

Sabrina's skin crawled, but at least having a task to focus on was helping her win the battle over her own stomach. "Could you tell what kind of being?"

"No, it's essence is very indistinct," Morgan replied, picking up the pace. "Could be something in the ethereal plane, actually. We can only hope."

Puck and Sabrina exchanged apprehensive looks. _Ethereal plane?_

But before either one of them could protest, they were in the foyer of the mayor's mansion, where the heavy wood doors took up most of the entryway. Morgan reached for the handle.

Hank was frowning. "Morgan, if you're worried about something infiltrating the mansion, then why are you opening the door?"

"Because, Hank, if you can't just assume that whatever it is won't find another way in," Morgan scoffed, as if she'd been asked to explain why two plus two equaled four. "Best to deal with this on our terms."

"I don't know about that," Puck muttered as Morgan pushed one of the doors open, eliciting creaking and groaning from the wood. Outside, the heat of early August had cooled to a sticky warmth that settled on their skin as they gathered at the top of the stone steps. A chorus of crickets and tree frogs filled Sabrina's ears.

Morgan had pulled a wand from somewhere and was holding it in front of her like a sword. She led the way down the stairs and then turned in a slow circle, scanning their surroundings.

She shuddered. "Can you feel it? Does anyone see anything"

Sabrina could not, but Puck could. The slight prickle on the edge of his conscience, like he was being watched.

"There," he said in a low voice, pointing into the dense foliage on the other side of the driveway.

Sabrina, Hank, and Morgan, living without the gift of sharp Fae eyesight, squinted into the pruned shrubbery. Morgan lit the tip of her wand and

While Sabrina still strained to see whatever they were looking at, Hank swore loudly and jumped back. Then, he reached out and grabbed Sabrina, pulling her towards him.

"Dad! What are you doing?"

"We need to get back inside, now," Hank demanded. The hand that gripped Sabrina's arm was shaking.

Morgan threw an almost annoyed glance over her shoulder.

"Grimms," she muttered under her breath. Then she took a lunging step forward, swung the wand in an arc over her head, and shouted, " _Ghabháil!"_

Sabrina looked to Puck for a translation. The Ferryport Landing coven used both Latin and Gaelic spells, but Morgan seemed to always speak in Gaelic.

"Catch," he said, narrowing his eyes.

A resulting net appeared in the sky, ten feet wide and the color of lightning. It dropped out of thin air, illuminating something humanoid, with long arms, talon-like claws, and a surprisingly short build. The net fell right through the creature, which was now facing them, cocking its head to the side. Sabrina realized that she could not make it out because it was nothing more than a shadow, a dark imprint on the world.

"Crap," Morgan muttered. She tossed her wand to the side, knotted her fingers together, and chanted, " _Dul ar ais go dtí an ceo!"_

The shadow seemed to dissipate into the night. Sabrina staggered as Henry started to pull her back into the mansion.

"Is it gone, or can I just not see it anymore?" she asked.

Hank said nothing, only wrapped his arm more tightly around Sabrina and then reached out to grab the back of Puck's t-shirt.

"It's gone," Puck replied, giving Henry a quizzical look as the older man pulled him backwards as well. "She sent it back to the…fog? She sent it somewhere. Maybe I need to brush up on my Gaelic."

 _"Chosaint an seo teaghais_ ," Morgan muttered, and moved her wand in a complicated shape. Sabrina could not remember when she'd retrieved it from the ground.

"Protect this dwelling," Puck said under his breath as a bluish-purple sparks rose into the sky above the driveway and then dissipating into mist. Wand held at the ready, Morgan backed back into the mansion after them.

"Puck, do you still see it?" she said without turning around.

"No," replied Puck with less gusto than usual, perhaps because he too was thrown by either the sudden disappearance of the figure, or because Hank was still gripping his shirt.

"Okay, that was pretty routine. I asked it to go back to the Ethereal Plane, and it went. You lot are useless, though. We need more witches in this town," Morgan said casually as she pushed the door closed and then turned to find Hank standing with one arm around Sabrina and the other hand in a viselike grip on Puck.

He was currently paler than some of the ghosts Morgan knew.

" _Hank_ ," Morgan whispered, and then stared at him as if she was trying to give him an x-ray with her eyes. "What's going on?"

In response, Henry stammered, "That…that was it."

"What was what?" Morgan snapped.

Henry's grip tightened on both kids. "That was what took me."

Sabrina turned to look at her father, her mouth falling open. In response to his daughter's beseeching look, Hank continued, "The night that Veronica and I were abducted. That…that thing was the last thing I remember seeing."

Sabrina shrank into her father's arm. The word _abducted_ sent shivers down her spine. Puck stared at Hank, too dumbstruck to pull away.

It was Morgan who recovered first. "You remember who took you? Did you tell anyone else about this?"  
"I don't…I didn't remember. Not until…right now…."

Hank shook his head. He let go of Puck and Sabrina and gripped his hair, staggering backwards.

"Dad?" Sabrina asked, her heart in her mouth as Henry stared past her with unseeing eyes.

Without warning, Morgan lunged forward. Clearly she'd seen something that Puck and Sabrina had not, because in that moment Hank's knees gave out, and Morgan's arms were there to slow his descension toward the ground.

"Hank. Hank, sit. It's okay," Morgan said in a gentle voice, and pushed him so that he was sitting back against the wall, next to the table with the picked-over remains of cheese and crackers. All the color had drained from his face and he continued to stare into space as if he was watching a movie that no one else could see.

"Dad, what's wrong?" Sabrina asked, her voice an octave higher than usual. She stepped toward him, but Morgan flung out an arm to stop her.

"There's something obstructing his memory of what happened when he was put in an artificial sleep. Someone cast a spell on him, pulled the wool over his eyes. This encounter triggered something in his brain. He's fighting the memory block." Morgan said in a low voice. She pressed her hand into Hank's forehead. " _Praeterita meminisse. Liquet videre. Loqueris ad me._ "

"What does that mean?" Sabrina asked Puck in a much squeakier voice than usually.

Puck was staring down at Hank, stunned. "Latin. I don't know."

Morgan spun to face them, graceful in a way Sabrina never could be, and put her hand on the younger girl's shoulder. "He's about to start speaking. Go get Daphne. We haven't much time."

Sabrina wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but she turned without argument and sprinted down the hallway. She burst into the wing and the others turned, expecting an update. Basil had woken up and was watching Netflix through headphones in Red's lap, and on the stage Robin Hood was speaking.

"Where is everyone?" Daphne whispered. "What happened?"

"Daphne, Morgan needs you. There's something wrong with Dad," Sabrina squeaked. Why couldn't she get her voice to sound normal?

" _What?_ " Daphne asked shrilly.

"Hush!" Pinocchio frowned and crossed his arms. "What's going on, Sabrina?"

Sabrina waved an impatient hand. "No time! Stay here and watch the others."

Daphne's eyes were as wide as saucers, and Sabrina could see her own terror reflected in them. Charming, who had been watching in concern, glanced at the stage to make sure Snow was okay and then after a moment of hesitation followed them out the door. As they ran back down the hallway, Sabrina explained as briefly as possible what had happened.

Back in the lobby, Morgan was kneeling beside Hank with her witch's kit lying open beside her. Tiny bottles of liquid potions, powders, and dried herbs were scattered about on the floral carpet. She was using her lit wand to examine Henry's eyes, which were darting from one side to another as if he was quickly reading the lines of a book.

"What's wrong with him?" Daphne asked, and while Sabrina had expected her to shriek, she sounded almost clinical, like a doctor ready to diagnose a patient. She fell to her knees beside Morgan and produced her own kit from some location that Sabrina could not pinpoint. "What are you doing?"

"Do you have Rosemary Oil and Essence of Foxglove?"

Daphne rested her chin on her knee, bottles clinking as she sorted through her kit.

"Whoa, foxglove? Isn't foxglove incredibly poisonous?" Charming asserted, stepping closer to the huddle. Sabrina was almost relieved he was there to say it, because she'd had that thought too, but didn't want to burst Daphne's bubble twice in one night.

"Rosemary," Daphne muttered under her breath, handing the bottle over to Morgan.

Morgan gave Charming a withering look. "Of course it is! _Essence_ of Foxglove is not."

She uncorked the bottle and handed it back to Daphne. "Rub the rosemary on his temples. Can you explain to everyone why we're doing this?"

Uncertainty clouded Daphne's eyes as she tipped the bottle onto one finger and then dabbed the oil carefully on Henry's temples. "Rosemary to enhance his memory and sharpen his concentration. And…I don't know what the foxglove is for."

She finished with the rosemary, looked to Morgan for approval, and re-corked her bottle.

"Isn't it antibacterial?" Puck asked. When both Sabrina and Charming gave him incredulous looks, he added defensively, "What? I know some things."

"Yes, but it also stimulates your brain and nervous system. This is in case he cannot wake up on his own," Morgan explained. Without turning around, she added almost dismissively, "Sabrina, not to worry, this is entirely different from last time."

Sabrina, who had tensed up behind her, forced herself to relax, disliking the way that Morgan could read her without even looking. Morgan checked her watch.

"I have the lily-of the valley," Morgan said, picking up a third tiny bottle that was half-full of iridescent pink liquid. "Daphne, give the foxglove to me. I'll do it, Veronica will kill me if you accidentally get some on yourself. Are you ready for this part? Make sure to use the hand that doesn't have rosemary on it. Also, does anyone have a notepad?"

"Yes, always," Charming said, reaching into his blazer and pulling out a small pocket notebook and a pen as Daphne nodded vigorously.

"Good, get ready to use it. He's going to start narrating what happened in this memory. You must write it all down," Morgan ordered. She was staring intently at a shimmering, odd looking watch that only had one hand. "How old is Hank? What month was it when they were kidnapped?"

"Thirty-seven. January," replied Sabrina. She felt like there was an iron fist around her lungs, squeezing all the air out. Henry was in some kind of stupor. He wasn't asleep, she reminded herself. Whatever was happening, Morgan had done it to him and Morgan could wake him up.

Morgan began to chant under her breath, twisting her wrist so the watch began to swing back and forth. In her other hand, she absently inverted the lily-of-the-valley. As they watched, Sabrina with her heart in her mouth and Daphne with utter fascination, the liquid in the bottle turned blue.

"What do you mean, narrating?" Puck asked. Without taking her eyes off of Morgan, Daphne held up a finger to silence him.

Morgan began to count down from thirteen. She handed the bottle to Daphne, who carefully pulled the cork out. When Morgan got down to one, Daphne drew a circle on Hank's forehead with the liquid and began to chant along with Morgan.

Sabrina, who had been trying very hard up until this point not to totally freak out, raked her fingers through her hair and then tugged hard on a large chunk of it.

Without warning, Hank started talking. It was so sudden that Sabrina flinched and Puck took a step backward.

"We started to skid. We're hydroplaning, said Veronica. Keep the wheel steady, we're hydroplaning. I am, I tell her, thinking this will all be okay once we get past this flat section of road. But then there is a person in the middle of the middle of the road and I hit the brakes. Veronica screams, and then we are off the road in a swale. Are you okay? Are you okay?" Hank asked, as if he expected an answer.

"What is he doing?" Sabrina asked, her heart starting to hammer. Her hands had moved from her hair to her face, which she was clutching, nails digging into her cheeks. Her fingers shook.

"He's reliving the memories that the spell erased," Charming replied in a hushed voice. "And narrating them for us."

Henry was speaking calmly, disassociated from reality, eyes darting maniacally from side to side.

"Veronica is okay a little shaken but okay. I am okay. Who was that in the middle of the road? Then a shadowy figure, sudden, outside my door. Two figures. The glass on the windshield is cracked. When did it crack? Loud thump. Something has landed on the roof. What is happening? I am thinking this is not an accident. This was intentional. This has Everafter written all over it. Veronica, I think we're in danger. I think this is all my fault. Veronica looks more scared than I've ever seen her. Veronica said, we're under attack. Henry, I know that man. Henry, the girls."

The tremble that was affecting Sabrina's hands migrated through her arms and wracked her entire body. She could hear frantic scribbling as Charming struggled to keep up with how fast Hank was talking. Daphne was chewing on one of her nails, unable to stop herself, feeling anxiety bubble up in her chest.

"Mom and Dad had told me to always carry a weapon, that you never know when you'll need it. Why hadn't I listened? The panic is setting in, a dozen shadowy figures ring our car and standing in front of the headlights is the only man not made of smoke, staring at Veronica, eyes hungry. Veronica takes a deep breath and opens her door. _Veronica, no!_ "

Henry, who had been speaking in monotone, yelled the last two words as if they'd been ripped from his throat. Sabrina, despite knowing the ending of this particular tale, let out a whimper. Henry blinked twice and the artificial calm of his features returned, like the surface of a pond after the a series of ripples.

"I jump out of the car. Veronica is speaking to the man. She says, Oz, what's going on? Oz is saying I'm sorry Veronica, but the Commander says I must do this. This is bigger than you, Veronica, this is for the greater good. But why does Veronica know the Wizard of Oz? What are you doing, I ask. We have cut my parents out, we carry the last name Grimm but we are not family. If you want something from them, we are not the way to get it. My heart is racing, if these shadow figures are truly nothing more than vapor, perhaps we could run? I take a step closer to Oz and two of the shadow men are on me, grabbing my arms, and they are not vaporous and might as well be steel. I am struggling and suddenly Veronica is pulling a knife from her belt, she has listened to my parent's advice. Oz is laughing, he is raising a wand above his head. I'm sorry, Hank, he says. I'm afraid you're wrong. I expected you to know that you cannot run from your fate. Veronica lunges as Oz lowers as his wand towards my chest. Blue light everywhere."

Henry closed his mouth. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but still his eyes were blank. Sabrina, Charming, and Puck all waited on tenterhooks for Morgan to do something wake him up. But Morgan and Daphne continued to stare expectantly at him.

Morgan started counting again. "Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—"

"It's dark and warm. There's a fire in the corner. The ground is cold and hard. Where are we? Veronica's voice. I sit up. The world spins. Oz stands in front of a cold hearth. Where are we? Oz is only smiling coldly. You two are very lucky, he tells us. You two are the key to the future. Oz, says Veronica, I don't know what you're talking about but please let us go, please, you know we have children, nobody will be home to send Sabrina and Daphne off to school, they must be scared."

Henry paused, swallowed, took a shuddering breath as if the next sentence scared him. "Oz laughs and says, Veronica, you've been asleep for ten months. I try to jump to my feet but I am too weak. Sabrina and Daphne, where are Sabrina and Daphne?"

Sabrina was starting to feel light-headed. She did not know they'd ever woken up between being kidnapped and being saved by Goldie. By the startled looks on everyone else's faces, they didn't know either.

"Veronica gasps, then screams. What did you do with our girls? She tries to scramble to her feet. Falls. Oz stops laughing. The children are fine, Veronica. Master ordered that we leave them be. I checked on them because I knew you would worry. They are in foster care."

Listening to her father was dredging up all the horrible things Sabrina had felt when parents had first disappeared. She felt the cold pit in her heart that had opened and had never quite seemed to close yawn wider.

"Are they safe? Veronica demands. Happy? Oz is shaking his head. No. No they are not. But I am afraid it doesn't matter what happens to them now. The Commander—Veronica is screaming at him. I am yelling, let us go! I try to stand up again but I am too weak. Why am I so weak? Let us go, Oz! Our children need us!"

 _Our children need us._

Tears pricked the backs of Sabrina's eyes. She could hear her heart pounding in her head, which was starting to spin. _Yes,_ she thought. _Yes, we did need you. And I had been angry because I thought you'd left us._

"I thought you were my friend! Veronica cries. How could you tear my family apart like this? I am looking around for an escape route but the shadow figures are lined around the room, this already feels hopeless, but I can only think of the girls. We must find a way out of here. We must get back to the girls."

Henry was still monotone, his eyes still frantically darting, but the corners of his mouth were starting to twitch down. A tear escaped and ran down Sabrina's cheek.

"One of the shadows is approaching Oz. As he walks he solidifies. The General is here, the solid man says. There is a whoosh of flame in the cold fireplace and out steps a woman. She wears a cloak. I cannot see her face. She asks Oz if we are the Grimms. Oz says where is the Commander, I thought the Commander was coming. She sent me instead, says the General. She approaches us and crouches down to look at Veronica. Who are you? Veronica demands. Return to the city, says the General. Oz, I will deliver them to the Master. Oz does not like this. The Commander said that I am to stay with them, Oz tells her. I don't care what the Commander said, we are now ordering you return to the city. The Commander says you must make sure that the Grimm children do not find their family, have their social worker send them to every corner of the earth if you have to, kill them, do what you must, but remember the prophecy that must not come to pass."

Sabrina's heart did a backflip.

 _Oz?_ Oz was the reason that Ms. Smirt had sent them to such horrible families, the reason her life had been waking nightmare, the reason she'd had to grow up so soon to protect Daphne? Their suffering had been not a cruel twist of fate but the explicit decision of this person…the Commander?

The elaborate web the Commander had spun around the Grimm family all those years ago was starting to come together. Unable to stop herself, Daphne reached out and rested her hand on her father's knee, hoping that it was able to give him some comfort in his current state.

"I feel like I am going to throw up. What prophecy? I raised my children so that they would not be a part of the Grimm line, they can't possibly be a part of any prophecy! Now I am yelling. The General is laughing. Then you are a fool. They are blind to their own legacy. They do not understand their future. You've stripped them of any possible protection."

Henry took a great, shuddering breath. Sabrina felt something brush her hand and then Puck's fingers, warm and grounding, slipped through hers and squeezed hard. She hadn't realized how desperately she needed something to hold on to until it was made available to her, and clung to his hand like a lifeline, wiping away tears with her other.

"They're just children! I am yelling again. They are nine and five! Please leave them alone! Oz ignores me. Oz says, I demand to speak to the Commander. I used to be the Commander's right hand. She sought my advice daily, surely she wants it now. As the General turns to Oz I turn to Veronica. Veronica, I am so, so sorry. I shouldn't have insisted on keeping the girls away from my family. They would've been safe if I'd done what my mother begged us to do. Veronica is shaking her head. No time for that. We—"

Hank's eyes rolled back into his head and he began to twitch.

"Oh my god," Morgan said, whipped her head around. "Stop!"

Sabrina turned around in time to see someone dressed all in black push through the front door and disappear into the night. Morgan and Daphne exchanged glances and then Morgan, moving so quickly Sabrina could not make out her individual movements, was across the foyer and out the front door in pursuit. Daphne had lunged forward and was rapidly dabbing foxglove on the pulse point of Henry's throat.

"What's wrong with him?" Sabrina cried, feeling useless. "What happened?"

"Someone interrupted our spell," Daphne stammered. "Oh my god, please work. I don't know what the difference is between a completed spell and an interrupted spell."

Henry had gone so still that Sabrina, for a horrible moment, thought the worst. They all seemed to hold their breath, and after a painful beat Henry's eyes flew open and he began to gulp air as if he'd just been rescued from drowning.

"Veronica," he said. "Veronica."

Daphne was holding his arm gently. "Dad, it's okay. We're at the Mayor's mansion. Veronica is talking to the crowd. It's summer. You were in a memory."

Hank squinted and reached up to touch his daughter's face. "Daphne? You look so old."

Daphne frowned. He looked past her, saw Sabrina, and Sabrina saw relief and confusion mingling on his face. Morgan returned, still running, breathing hard.

 _You were in a memory._ Not, _you were dreaming_ , Sabrina thought. How strange and jarring. He looked so lost that it physically hurt Sabrina.

"Whoever it was got away," Morgan said between gasps. "Definitely a woman. I don't know who…or how. No one I know has the ability to interrupt a spell like that, except the rest of our coven. I don't know who would know what we were doing and want to stop it."

"There are a lot of people here tonight," Charming said. "The important thing is that Hank is okay."

"Something's wrong with him," said Daphne quietly, as if this would stop Hank from overhearing. "He said I look old."

"Probably just a temporary issue from being ripped out of the memory like that. Like how divers get the bends if they resurface too quickly," Morgan said, but concern colored her features. She knelt down beside Hank and took his face in her hands. "Look at me. What's your name? Your full name."

"Henry Grimm," Henry said. "Morgan, what happened? What did you do?"

"What day is it?" Morgan continued. "Where are we?"

Hank looked startled. "I…we're in the mayor's mansion."

"Who is the current mayor?" Morgan pressed.

Hank's confusion was enough to trigger belated panic and anxiety in Sabrina. She realized that tears were still streaming down her face, and suddenly did not want Daphne to see them. Without a word, she yanked her hand out of Puck's—what was she doing, anyways, holding his hand?—and turned and sprinted down the hallway. She banged her way into the girls' bathroom, thankful there was nothing in her stomach for her to throw up, and clutched the sides of the white sink. Sabrina stared at herself in the mirror, forcing the tears back, taking deep breaths.

The bathroom door opened again and she jumped. Turning, Sabrina cried out, "Puck! This is the girl's bathroom! Get out!"

He strolled forward instead, leaning down to glance under the stalls. "No one else is here."

Sabrina made an angry noise in the back of her throat. "Why did you follow me?"

"Hank said we were supposed to move in pairs," Puck reminded her. He rolled his eyes for her benefit and asked, "Especially after what just happened. Consider it your own fault that I'm here. What are you doing, anyways?"

Deciding it was not worth her time to bicker with him, Sabrina turned back to the sink and pressed her fingers under her eyes. "I didn't want them to see me crying. Especially Daphne."

She could hear him hesitate. He was leaning against one of the stall doors, his hands in his pockets, real concern on his face that he was clearly trying to hide. Sabrina didn't want to see it. She turned on the cold water and splashed her face, then wet a paper towel and pressed it over her eyes.

Puck found it easier to speak his mind without her glaring at him. "You don't have to pretend that the past doesn't bother you anymore, Grimm. She's eleven now, just like you were when the two of you showed up here."

Sabrina took a great, shuddering breath. "I don't think I realized just how young eleven was at the time."

Puck nodded. He, of all people, understood.

Sabrina sniffled. She took a deep breath, shook out her paper towel and turned around. "How do I look?"

"Like you've been crying," Puck responded dryly. Sabrina cursed and tossed the paper towel in the trash. Puck wondered why she didn't seem to care if he saw her crying.

"Sometimes I think about what would have happened if Granny had never come for us," Sabrina said, slumping against the cold sink. "Mom and Dad would have been lost forever, probably. Daphne and I…I don't think we would have survived. In foster care, I felt like I was living in a nightmare. Sometimes when things got really bad, I told myself that it was only a dream, and if I could just get through a little bit more, I'd wake up. It was easier when the person to blame was Mirror, because he's dead and gone, and because Daphne and I didn't seem to have been factored into the equation, just sort of collateral damage. But now…"

She finally looked up at Puck. Puck half expected her to be crying again, but instead she was shaking, and her voice shook with her. "Someone put us in foster care and left us to die. And I'd thought that at least my parents been spared knowing what had happened to us, but they told them. To be cruel."

"But you survived," Puck said. "And your parents got you back."

Sabrina raked her fingers through her hair, and then nodded.

"We won," Puck reminded her. "They didn't."

"Did we?" Sabrina asked. "All this time we thought that the Scarlet Hand ended with the Master and that they were rebuilding slowly. But now…."

Sabrina paused, staring at the tips of her hair where they tangled around her fingers. Puck almost felt like he could see the gears moving in her brain, like she was on the brink of figuring something out.

"The Commander and the General…" she began, and then looked at him, fresh horror in her eyes. "Wasn't the Patchwork Girl talking to someone called the Commander in Fort Charming? And didn't we think that was who had taken over for Mirror?"

"But the Commander they were talking to was a man," Puck replied. "The Commander that Oz was referencing was a woman. It can't have been the same person."

"Someone called the Commander was pulling the strings back then," Sabrina argued. "Why would the Scarlet Hand want more leadership turnover after losing the Master?"

"Maybe they blamed the Commander for losing the war?" Stumped, Puck rubbed his head. He scoffed. "I hate this. In Faerie, there's no hiding behind vague titles. The _Commander._ The _General._ The _Master._ Like, take responsibility for your villainy, people! Your face is less splotchy now, by the way."

Sabrina turned around to look at herself in the mirror. "I feel like every time we go looking for answers, we end up with more questions. I feel like we're set on some impossible quest."

A scream came from the direction of the lobby. Sabrina and Puck looked at each other.

"Daphne," they said together, and for the fifth time Sabrina found herself sprinting down the hallway behind the auditorium. She skidded into the lobby, Puck half a step behind her, and found that the scream had come not from Daphne but from Goldilocks. The meeting had clearly just let out, because there was a mass of Everafters in the lobby. Sabrina's eyes sought out her family—Hank, leaning on Charming at the back of the crowd, Daphne and Veronica in the thick of it all, all staring at the wall directly opposite from where Hank had been slumped mere minutes ago.

There it was, about five feet off the ground. It had to have been put there by some silent watcher while Hank was speaking, while they were all distracted. The symbol from Sabrina's worst nightmares, the image that seemed to inhabit the darkest part of her brain no matter how hard she tried to banish it. Still fresh, dripping scarlet, like the mark of a hard, hateful slap on bare skin. _  
We're watching,_ the handprint seemed to threaten. _We're coming._

 **A/N. Happy New Year! I didn't make any resolutions, but 2019 brings with it the promise of change. I graduate college this year, and, fingers crossed, will move across the country and start graduate school. I'm also hoping to finish this story this year, but we'll see.**

 **The important thing I want to say about this chapter is about the spells. I chose Latin as a language for them because 1. It seems to be a common thread in lots of stories and 2. I took Latin for all 4 years of high school so I still have some grasp of the language. I chose Gaelic because, in my story, fairies originated from Ireland and Scotland and I like to think they had a hand in spellwork. However I don't know the slightest thing about Irish or Scottish Gaelic. I used Google translate so I apologize if you do speak the language and my translations don't make sense.**

 **Now I'm going to ramble a bit because it's been five whole months since I last posted a chapter of this story. This was a weird chapter for me to write for a few reasons. First of all, I don't think I've ever managed to write a chapter that didn't need a single one of those horizontal lines that signify a scene change. I** **also struggled to get Hank's memory right for a long time. I debated making it more like a flashback or something that Sabrina could see while it happened, but I didn't want the details to be too clear to anyone, especially since not even Hank knows the whole truth behind it. So I ended up playing around with the idea of using all dialogue to explain a whole scene to make everything seem more chaotic. I'm not sure I like it, but hopefully it wasn't too confusing or hard to read.**

 **I said this in my last author's note but the crazy thing about this story is how it keeps getting away from me. It's going to be long as heck. I try to keep my chapters between 7,000-9,000 words and ended up dividing what I thought would be chapter 6 into chapters 6 and 7. There are just so many characters doing so many things that are so fun to write about that I can't find places to cut, so it looks like length is the answer. The good news is I'm already done with chapter 7, so it should be posted pretty soon too! I'm especially excited about both of these chapters because it feels to me like a turning point in the story where the characters are established and we we have real questions to answer.**

 **I hope you guys liked the prominence of Daphne and Morgan in this chapter. I felt a little funny writing about them as witches because it's not a huge feature in the books, but I think it's a cool aspect of the books that we don't think about. I think a lot of my inspiration from them came from watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix. Great show. I am obsessed with it, but every time I turn it on I end up thinking about Sabrina Grimm and this story and end up switching to writing instead.**

 **Anyways, I'm very excited to finally be able to post a chapter and hear what you guys think! I hope you're enjoying this story as much as I'm enjoying writing it. Thank you to everyone who reviewed this story so many months ago. I look forward to getting those emails so much.**

 **Guest reviews:**

 **Guest (10/6/18): You're not late at all! If anything, I'm even later. Although I wish I could claim to be Michael Buckley, I sadly am not. I hope you liked this next chapter too!**

 **Whovianeverlark17: I'm so happy you like it!**

 **Guest (8/16/18): Thank you! And thanks for telling me :)**

 **I12Bfree: So glad you liked the birth certificate scene! I think the Jake and Puck dynamic might be my favorite thing in this fic. I wrote a lot about them in chapter 7. No worries on the length, I have a funny feeling this one will be even longer than Tales from the Tundra! But we'll see, only time will tell because if there's one thing this story is doing, it's seriously getting away from me!**

 **Burgh: Your review meant so much to me! I am so happy you like the plot and the first five chapters. And I definitely deserve to be hunted down since I take forever to publish new chapters!**


	7. Heat of Summer

**A/N: Hi friends!**

 **I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted on this site. This story will not be abandoned; I am determined to finish it and am coming to terms with the fact that it might take a while. I've had a lot of big changes in my life in the past 6 ish months—I went through a ton of job interviews, graduated college, moved across the country, did research in the middle of the ocean, and started grad school. I've lived in the same place up until this point so it was a lot to deal with. Life has been really overwhelming and I've struggled to find time to do the things I enjoy (like write this story) but it's finally starting to settle down again. I'm hoping to be able to use writing as a creative outlet again. That was probably too much information about me for this website but oh well, now you know.**

 **This chapter has been brewing for a while. Like I said in my last A/N, I actually wrote most of it a long time ago, but then it didn't feel right to me and I didn't have the creative energy to figure out what was wrong with it. I like it now and I'm posting it anyways so that I can move on. I hope you all like it too.**

 **I also checked the email linked to this account for the first time in a while and saw all of your reviews. Thank you so so much for the support and asking me to update! Sometimes I can't tell if people are reading/liking this story so I appreciate the validation. Here are the responses to guest reviews:**

 **VeryGrimEveraftr: I am so sorry for giving you the impression this story was abandoned, but at the same time I'm really glad to hear that you like it. It was your second review that finally made me sit down and post this thing. Thank you for reviewing twice!**

 **Guest 8/1/19: Thank you! Here is the update, I hope you like it!**

 **Cupcake: Thank you! I hope you like this chapter!**

 **Guest 3/4/19: Thank you!**

 **Burgh: Ugh, sorry that this update took even longer than forever! Thank you for your awesome review, I'm so happy you liked that chapter! I hope you like this update as well!**

 **And now, onto the story:**

"What do you think they're talking about up there?" Sabrina asked.

Adjusting her fingers so they touched the seam, Sabrina stepped back and hurled the football through the air. It was a good throw, she thought, her eyes straying to the window of the Meeting Room where she and Puck had been kicked out during the transition from a 4F subcommittee meeting to a 4A subcommittee meeting. Since then, the blinds had been drawn and the door locked.

Sabrina watched Puck go running across the yard and jump into the air to snatch the football. He jogged back toward her and threw it, a low throw. Sabrina grabbed the ball and it slipped through her hands.

 _Butterfingers_ , was what her dad would say if he was out here. Puck merely gave her a mocking smirk.

In the two weeks since that disastrous night at the Mayor's mansion, Sabrina didn't think that the Meeting Room had ever been empty for more than a few hours at a time. The Council was busier than ever before, what with the surge in interest from the Ferryport Landing Everafters, the discovery of the red handprint, the Patchwork Girl's warning, and the fact that Baba Yaga was still missing.

"Probably stuff about Hank they don't want us to hear," Puck replied from the other end of the backyard as Sabrina threw the ball back to him.

The discovery of Hank's blocked memory had been so explosive that someone might as well have dropped a bomb on them. Robin Hood had coped with the fallout by meticulously dividing Council topics into committees, and subdividing those committees into subcommittees. Puck and Sabrina were members of subcommittee 4E, which dealt with all matters concerning the Patchwork Girl and related entities (the subcommittee had fought for half an hour to stop Robin Hood from subdividing them again into the Patchwork Girl, Glass Cat, and Baba Yaga) and 4F, which dealt with all matters concerning Hank's memory. They were tied as the Council members serving on the least number of subcommittees. Even Daphne, because she was a witch, served on four. At first, they had been mad, but after seeing how often each subcommittee was meeting in the wake of the town hall meeting, they'd stopped complaining. Sabrina was seriously getting sick of all the foot traffic through the house and had taken to either shutting herself in her room or wandering around outside to get away from it.

"Do you think they're right?" Puck prompted loudly when Sabrina didn't answer him. He shifted his weight onto his back foot and hurled the football into the air like a rocket. "That if they can somehow trigger Veronica's lost memories, she may remember the General's face?"

This was the question that had shifted the meeting from 4F to 4A. The 4A subcommittee was the most serious, most secretive committee that made the tough decisions about all Committee 4 matters. It made Sabrina's head hurt to try and keep all the numbers straight.

She ran forward and just barely missed the ball as it hit the ground, hissing in frustration at everything.

"I don't know," Sabrina replied, scooping the ball out of the tall grass. Her stomach twisted. She could not bear the thought of her mother being subjected to Morgan's spell as well. "Honestly, I don't even want to think about it."

"But you've been thinking about it a lot, haven't you?" Puck said. It was more of a statement than a question, like he needed to confirm what he'd known all along.

Sabrina thought back to the night before when she couldn't sleep and had been drawn to the Meeting Room by her unquiet mind, the same way she had many times when her parents were comatose. At 2:00 am, the Meeting Room was finally empty, and so Sabrina had stood at the table, unnerved by the quiet, and read the writing on the walls. The cramped lettering made the whole room seem frantic, with a billion unanswered questions of various colors buzzing on the whiteboards like a swarm of bees. She'd zeroed in on the 4F questions, staring at them as if her willpower was enough to elicit answers.

 _Agenda Item #4F_

 _Find out who the "shadow men" are. Where did they come from? Are they human? Are they Everafters?_

 _Find out why the "shadow men" help the Scarlet Hand._

 _Why was there a "shadow man" at the Mayor's Mansion and what about it punched through Hank's memory spell?_

 _Who laid the memory spell and why?_

But long meetings that involved recounting the memory and drawing diagrams had done nothing but fuel the slow, furious fire the burned in Sabrina's heart. She wanted to interrogate people. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to run across the surface of the planet on her own two legs until she found the answers. She wanted to do anything but sit in meetings for four hours a day.

 _Who are they?_ She wanted to demand of the buzzing blue words on the whiteboard, as if they could hear her. _Who are the people who did this to us?_

"Sabrina?" Puck prompted.

Realizing she'd been staring into the woods with the ball held loosely in her hands, Sabrina set her jaw and threw it back to him.

"I guess."

It was nice to be outside, with Puck. Sabrina had felt a little embarrassed after the night of the town hall meeting. After all, Puck had watched her cry. A lot. Plus there was the matter of him holding her hand and following her into the bathroom and dragging her out of the dark past she'd been lost in. But Puck had acted like nothing had happened, had not even teased her for crying, and so after a few days Sabrina had chalked it up to being unaccustomed to Puck's friendship and tried to let it go too.

She hadn't seen him much lately. Aside from when they had Council meetings, he'd been spending most of his time with Maddie. He had not been around to see Hank and Veronica struggle to cope with the fact that their memories had been stolen, or to watch Sabrina dissolve into a million pieces over and over, when some little trigger sent her spiraling off into nothing.

She grunted under her breath as the ball hit her palms.

It lurked at the edge of her conscience, nowadays, the truth about her past, the truth about foster care, ready to pounce at the slightest hint of a thought. Desperate to avoid adding her struggles to the growing family pile, she'd been bottling it up. She hadn't realized how much she relied on Puck to understand her until he was no longer there.

Sabrina hurled the ball across the unkempt lawn, a far throw, making him run for it.

Puck ran. When he'd made up his mind that he would try out for Ferryport Landing's football team, he'd guessed that Sabrina's infamous right hook would translate into a pretty wicked throwing arm. She was great to practice with, even though she was terrible at catching the ball.

"It'll be better to know who we're up against. At least we have some details. We know the General is a woman and the Commander is a man," Puck replied, after he'd skidded to a halt, the ball safely tucked under one arm.

" _Probably_ a man," Sabrina corrected. "In Hank's memory, the Commander was a woman. But either way, that narrows our search down to nearly everyone in this world and every other world."

Even at a distance, her sarcasm was withering. Puck sighed. This was a circular conversation the two of them had had several times since that night in the bathroom.

Puck turned the football over in his hands before adjusting his grip and sending the ball sailing back toward her.

Sabrina reached up to catch the ball and it slipped through her fingers. With surprising agility, she spun around and managed to snatch it out of the air before it hit the ground. She changed the topic.

"I feel like this is getting out of hand. There aren't enough Council members to cover everything. I mean, we _still_ don't know where the Patchwork Girl is or why she wanted Baba Yaga, and instead of figuring that out we're rushing to identify the Commander and the General. People are so wrapped up in this that they've hardly started to work on the follow up to the town hall meeting, which is what we were supposed to be focusing on for August!"

"Are you worried?" Puck mocked. "Not enough Grimm detective power in this house to solve the myster—"

Puck abandoned his sentence to go sprinting across the lawn after the ball. He could tell he wasn't going to make it in time, and gave one ferocious, desperate leap. His wings extended and he intercepted the ball, hitting the ground hard and rolling.

"Puck! Stop doing that! You can't use your wings at tryouts!" Sabrina yelled as Puck landed hard, staggered backward, and chucked the ball into the air. "You are such an idiot!"

Sabrina lunged to catch the ball and Puck cackled as it slipped through her fingers. The more riled up Sabrina got, the more erratically she threw. Puck was certain this was not intentional on her part, but it made her throws more difficult to catch, which was good for him, and sometimes he couldn't help pushing her buttons.

She scowled as she went striding after it. "I'm not going to help you practice if you laugh at me, Stinkface."

Puck had the decency to look ashamed for two whole seconds before continuing their conversation. "I can hardly remember the town hall meeting. We were barely present. Honestly, Grimm, the combination of what happened to your dad and this new intel about the Scarlet Hand does seem more important than the town hall meeting. I mean, we're pretty much living in a pure state of chaos. It's awesome. Everyone is afraid another shadow man is going to appear. Granny had Morgan put protective enchantments on the house, but half the town is constantly in and out anyways. Basil has started sleeping with your parents, no one is allowed to go anywhere alone anymore, you're having nightmares again, and—"

"I'm not having nightmares," Sabrina protested in a knee-jerk-response sort of way.

He threw the ball back to her, and this time she did catch it, her entire body contracting inward as if it was incredibly important to her that the ball didn't slip away.

"We share a wall, Snotface. Nice try," Puck replied with a smirk. He could see her face reddening and tensed, waiting for her to start yelling and throw something that would be nearly impossible for him to catch. But instead, Sabrina looked down at the football in her hands, and Puck watched in alarm as the corners of her mouth twitched down.

Puck froze. Tactless. The night of the town hall meeting, Puck had been jolted awake by an ear piercing scream. He'd fallen out of his hammock in a half-awake, panicked stupor, listening as Sabrina's door opened and then, a moment later, the bathroom door shut.

He'd paced down the hallway, checked in her bedroom, put his ear to the bathroom door, gone back into his own room and checked his sensors, and surmised that it had been a nightmare. It seemed that almost every night for the next fourteen nights, a noise from her room managed to wake him up.

He hadn't told her. He didn't want her to know, and he hadn't meant for it to slip out now. Sabrina looked back up from the football, and while he'd expected a fiery scowl, she just looked sort of lost. An unexpected wave of guilt crashed over him, and he knew he should say something, but then Jake rounded the corner of the house.

"Dinner."

Along with the appearance of Jake came the reappearance of Sabrina's mask. The dark look in her eyes that had the semblance of a drowned person disappeared, and her mouth pressed into a thin line. Sabrina spun on her heel, her hair bouncing over her shoulder in a golden cloud, and followed Jake into the house without a backward glance.

Extra chairs from around the house had been pulled around the dinner table tonight, as usual. Council members were in meetings so frequently and for so many hours that they often didn't bother to leave for dinner. Tonight, it was Morgan, Little John, and Charming who joined them.

Dishes were passed around, Red poured everyone glasses of Granny's homemade, vibrant-yellow iced tea, and then all heads turned to Morgan, the chairwoman of subcommittee 4A, who had returned from a classified mission to Canada earlier.

The witch looked up from her place and swallowed quickly when she saw everyone was looking at her.

"What?"

"Have you made any headway on the shadow men?" Pinocchio asked.

"Do you have any leads on who the Commander or General might be?" Daphne added.

"Where did you go in Canada?" Puck prodded.

"Um," Morgan sighed distractedly, twirling Granny's signature squid ink noodles on her fork. There were dark bags under her eyes that hadn't been there the last time Sabrina had seen her. "Yeah, we have some ideas."

Little John and Morgan shared a tense look, while Puck leaned against the table, clearly expecting an answer to his question as well.

Granny swiftly changed the topic, asking Daphne about the summer soccer camp that she'd started. While Daphne chattered away, Puck tried to ignore Sabrina, which was difficult because she was across the table from him. Although she'd adjusted to Granny's strange food over the years and usually ate a decent amount of food, she was only picking moodily at her noodles. As Puck watched, she smushed down one of her meatballs and blew out a breath.

Pinocchio watched Puck and Sabrina ignore each other. At some hard-to-define point over the summer, the three of them had started spending more time together. A consequence of this was that he could read their expressions, and, usually, decipher their interactions. But something was wrong with both of them, and all Pinocchio could figure out was that they weren't on the same page about what it was.

"I'm on a tight schedule tonight, so I'm going to go back upstairs and finish my analysis," Morgan announced, after clearing her plate at a speed to rival Daphne and Puck. "I'll be gone in a little bit. Relda, thanks for dinner. Charming, don't forget to send me that email after you talk to Snow. Daphne, I'll see you and Elvis tomorrow after camp, right? Got a lot to do tomorrow, hon, a lot to talk about."

"Sabrina," Pinocchio began as the witch headed up the stairs. "Are you still going to Sacred Grounds after your tryout?"

As if the sound of his voice had pulled her from a deep contemplative state, Sabrina started and replied, "What?"

"Tomorrow? Sacred Grounds? I have a paper to write and I think you said Rachel was going."

"Oh, yeah, right," Sabrina muttered without looking at anyone.

"Puck, you want to come?" Pinocchio prompted, glancing between the two of them. Sabrina stared off in the opposite direction.

"Can't," Puck replied around a giant mouthful of squid ink noodles, speaking to his plate. "Hanging with Maddie."

Basil, sitting next to Puck, decided he was impatient for the older boy's attention and stole his fork. While he was preoccupied, Pinocchio watched Sabrina's expression slip from carefully neutral into completely miserable and back.

"May I be excused?" Sabrina asked. Her voice sounded like an echo of itself.

"Sure," Veronica replied, her face a picture of concern, and half the table watched Sabrina leave the room. It wasn't until she'd made it to the sink to drop off her plate, all the way back through the dining room, and up the staircase before conversation started up again.

Sabrina wandered down the hallway listlessly. She passed the Meeting Room and saw Morgan sitting at the table. One of the nagging questions that had been pushed to the back of her brain surfaced, and Sabrina backpedaled.

"Hi…um, Morgan?" Sabrina asked, halfway in the doorway of the Meeting Room and heavily debating just backing back out and keeping her questions to herself. But the witch looked up and gave her an inviting, but superficial, smile. Sabrina steeled herself and continued, "Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything," Morgan replied, gesturing to the empty chairs around the table. "Whether or not I can answer is entirely dependent on the question."

"Uh," Sabrina said, frozen. "Okay."

Making her mind up, Sabrina shut the door, her heartbeat audible in her ears, and took a seat. "I know that I don't know everything you guys know about the Shadow Men. In the 4F meeting earlier today, you guys kept talking about the Ethereal Plane. You said that the shadow man you sent away came from there? And people kept referencing it in my dad's memory. What…what is it?"

Morgan closed the book she'd been annotating. Her smile curled into a smirk. "Have you asked Daphne?"

Sabrina blinked, starting to regret initiating conversation. "No."

Morgan continued as if she'd never expected Sabrina to respond in the first place. "The Ethereal Plane is how we get to places like Oz and the Snow Queen's Realm. With the right information and incantations, you can forge pathways through the Ethereal Plane and get to where you need to go. Witches manipulate the Ethereal Plane and draw power from it. It's used by the Fae for some purposes, although they call it Nowhere. Other beings, certain Everafters, regularly travel through the Plane and are able to manipulate it as well. We're hypothesizing that the shadow men, whoever they are, are able to create channels through the Plane that bring them here.

"Wait, _what_?" Sabrina shook her head as if to clear it. "How come I've never heard of this place?"

Tapping the withered cover of the book in front of her with one long, manicured finger, Morgan replied, "I suppose the Ethereal Plane would be largely unimportant to your family. Everafters rarely deal in the details of the Ethereal Plane. It's too dangerous if you haven't been properly trained, and generally useless when you have tools like the Nome King's belt."

"Oh," said Sabrina, feeling stupid.

"You should also know," Morgan continued mildly, her brown eyes wide and endless, "that the Hall of Wonders exists in the Ethereal Plane."

"It does?"

The knowing smirk returned. "Have you never thought about where the Hall of Wonders exists? It certainly doesn't exist here."

"I thought—I thought it existed in the mirror," Sabrina stammered.

Morgan gave a tinkling laugh. "Yes, the mirror existed in this very room. But Mirror and the Hall of Wonders were not crammed into a sliver of glass, that's not how space works. Basic physics, Sabrina. Everything has to exist somewhere. Nothing can be nowhere, unless by nowhere you mean Nowhere. Question everything you think you know, Sabrina. The mirror was just a door into the Hall of Wonders. We can and do still access the Hall of Wonders, it's just harder without the door. Oh, that reminds me, I need to bug Bunny about getting us a new entryway."

Sabrina thought that Morgan had a lot of nerve to call upon the laws of physics to uphold her point. Either unaware or indifferent to the appalled look Sabrina was giving her, Morgan pulled her yellow legal pad toward her and scribbled a note to herself on it.

"And so you think the thing we saw at the town hall meeting was from the Ethereal Plane?" Sabrina asked when she'd recovered.

"Not from, in. It was most certainly in the Ethereal Plane, or I would've been able to trap it. Its goal was certainly not to come spirit anyone away, like what had happened to your parents. For whatever reason, it was observing, gathering information. No, the shadow men are not _from_ the Ethereal Plane, of that I'm certain. How they are so well trained to use it, I have no idea."

Sabrina broke out in a cold sweat. "Does that mean anything could be in the Ethereal Plane, right now, watching us?"

Her voice had surpassed squeaky and reached the level of shrill. Morgan paused, seemed to realize the damage she'd done, and tried to backtrack.

"No, Sabrina. Firstly, it goes both ways. If something is in the Ethereal Plane and it is watching you, then you can see it as well, as if we were dealing with a physical curtain or veil. Secondly, there are ways to make the Plane impossible to cross through or see through. In this house and in the Mayor's Mansion—that is why the creature was outside its walls—the Plane cannot be breached at all."

Morgan leaned forward and gave Sabrina's arm a brief squeeze, as if this was supposed to reassure her. She drew her hand away, and then jumped as the massive black gemstone on her middle finger faded to a clear blue.

"Damn it, the time. There's only four hours until moonrise, and I have a potion brewing. Sabrina, I must go. Do you have any more questions?" Morgan asked.

Sabrina shook her head. "I just really can't believe I've never come across this."

"You've been looking in the wrong places, babe," Morgan replied. She jumped to her feet, gathered her things in a graceful flourish, and then slung her leather bag over her shoulder. "Good luck tomorrow morning, Sabrina."

Spinning to face the whiteboard behind her, Morgan uncapped an Expo marker and wrote _Morgan: 8/22, 7:00-7:30,_ at the bottom of a growing list of names.

"If you want to learn more about the Ethereal Plane, you need to be reading witch lore."

Without waiting for a response, Morgan turned on her heel and left the room.

* * *

There was a loud knock on the front door. Puck and Jake, who were on dish duty after dinner, glanced at each other and shrugged, figuring someone else would get it. It was only a few minutes later, when Granny and Robin Hood entered the kitchen, that they saw the excuse to stop doing the dishes early and turned around.

"Robin Hood has something to ask you, Puck," said Granny. When no one moved, she waved her hand and added, "I'm sure you can multitask, the dishes aren't going to do themselves."

"What's up?" Puck asked, picking up the dish towel again and accepting a clean plate from Jake.

"Well," Robin Hood began, lacing his fingers together and cracking his knuckles. "As you know, I'm heading the committee for Agenda item #1: creating and distributing guidelines for secrecy."

"Right," Puck replied, opening the cabinet and putting the plate away. Robin Hood was the only founding member who, in addition to being caught up in the maelstrom of shadowy figures and secret leaders, was somehow finding time to work on the Council's other projects.

"And have you heard about the problem with the Ferryport Landing Everafter in New York City?" Robin Hood pressed.

Puck's drying slowed as he thought. "The problem where Rip van Winkle's cab caused a three car pile-up?"

"No."

"The problem where Peter Pan's lost boys got in a fight Sinbad and his pirates in the middle of a crowded harbor?"

Robin Hood started to speak and then cut himself off. "No. And we're not responsible for them, they're not Ferryport Everafters."

"That's what I like to hear," Puck agreed, pointing a clean fork approvingly at Robin Hood. "Forget Peter Pan!"

Realizing this guessing game could last a while, Robin Hood cut to the chase. "Baby bear, of Goldilocks and the three bears, accidently transformed into bear form in front of a bunch of humans. Faerie was able to respond with damage control so quickly and so well that there was no fallout."

Instead of responding, Puck merely fixed Robin Hood with a catlike stare. He looked like his mother.

Robin Hood continued, "I can't figure out what Faerie did that was so efficient. I think they have a lot of strategies that could really help us move forward, especially in light of Hank's memory. But Titania refuses to speak to us and none of my other connections in Faerie will return my calls."

Puck's face had shuttered closed, save for the feral glint in his eyes. "Consider yourself lucky."

Robin Hood and Jake exchanged looks over Puck's head. "So, we were thinking maybe you could set up a meeting with your mother for us, to talk about Council matters. There's no rush, though, I think we'll be too busy to go until at least October."

"You want me to talk to my mother? In Faerie?" Puck asked, his mind going completely blank. He looked to Jake for help, but seeing the carefully neutral expression on his face, came to the horrifying realization that he had known about this plan. He continued with fresh horror, "Is this the reason you thought we should come home and join the Council? So that you'd have me on the bench to get the Queen Regent of Faerie to play nice with you when you needed it?"

Puck could feel the blood pounding in his ears. He thought back Amsterdam, nearly a year and a half ago now, when Jake had brought up the concept of returning to Ferryport Landing. Part of the reason was a top secret mission, which had turned out to be the Council, but his other reason was so that Puck could go to high school.

 _At this rate, Puck, you're only going to be fourteen once,_ Jake had said. _Why don't you experience it for real? We have all the time in the world to travel, but it would mean a lot to me to see you grow up properly._

Robin Hood blinked in confusion and defaulted to the simplest question.

"On the bench?" he echoed.

"Sports metaphor, he's trying out for football," Jake explained hastily, taken aback at Puck's sudden anger. He waved a soapy pan at him in an effort to calm him down. "Puck, of course that's not why. Robin Hood had this idea a few days ago and brought it to me. It's not a big deal. We'd travel up there for a few days, chat with Titania, come home again. You'd get to miss school, and we could eat out every night."

A year and a half ago, Puck had laughed at the idea of returning to Ferryport Landing for school, but as the days wore on he'd found himself glancing down at his growing hands, shoving feet into shoes that must have shrunken overnight, and realized how quickly he was moving through the human phases of life with no way of stopping himself. And so weeks later Puck had approached him and said yes, yes he wanted to go to school, yes he wanted to return to Ferryport Landing, the place that had been an irrevocable turning point in his life, the place where his immortal childhood had ended and the rest of his life had begun. And a small part of him had felt touched that Jake cared enough to want him to grow up well, not that he would ever admit it. He had cared enough to get him a birth certificate, and keep buying him clothes as he outgrew them.

But really, Jake had brought him back so that the Council could use him. Just like everyone else. He'd been played.

"No! I'm not going back there! I agreed to come back to Ferryport Landing, not Faerie!"

He threw the dish towel onto the counter and stormed past Robin Hood out of the kitchen.

"I didn't mean to upset him," Robin Hood said, turning to watch Puck leap the entire staircase at once.

"Uh," Jake began, sure that whatever was going on, it ran deeper than the favor Robin Hood had asked of him. "I'll go talk to him."

He ran after Puck, reaching the second floor as Puck's door slammed shut.

Jake gave the door a sharp rap. "Puck!"

When he received no response, positive or negative, he tested the handle and found it unlocked. He entered the room, taking care to step around the trick plate Puck had installed—Jake did not know what would happen if he stepped on it, and did not care to find out—and over the trip wire. Puck was lying on the trampoline with his arms crossed, staring moodily at the setting sun. His feet were hanging off it now, and it sank under his weight. Jake glanced at the empty hammock that the boy had been sleeping in for the past year and then back, wondering what comfort Puck still drew from the trampoline.

"Puck?" Jake repeated, but received no answer from the teenager. He cast around for what to say next and came up empty. "What just happened?"

"I am not going back to Faerie. Not for a few days, not for an hour, not even for a minute. If the only reason you brought me back here is so that you could eventually use me to get favors from Titania, then I'll just leave and go live in the woods again."

Jake said, "You don't have to go back to Faerie."

"You were there, you know what she said to me the last time I saw—wait, what?" Puck, who was ready for battle, was caught off guard. His head snapped in Jake's direction, and Jake saw in his eyes a childish panic, mingled with disbelief. Suddenly, he understood what was wrong.

"Puck," Jake began, perching on the hard edge of the trampoline. "You have a choice. You don't have to go back if you don't want to. I won't force you, and I'll certainly stop anyone who tries to."

They stared at each other, Jake motionless, Puck struggling to process what he had just promised.

"I know better than anyone how you feel about your mother. If you don't want to go to Faerie, then the Council can figure something else out. I can go tell Robin Hood no right now. He won't be angry," Jake continued when Puck merely gaped at him.

"Really?" Puck said, the panic overtaken for desperation for a moment before he recovered and cleared his throat. "Yes, tell him that. And tell him where he can stick his—"

"Hey," Jake said sternly, cutting him off. "I know you don't like your family in Faerie. I told Robin Hood you wouldn't go for this but he didn't think there would be harm in asking."

"I don't _have_ a family," Puck said savagely, and his voice cracked a bit at the end. J

"Yes, you do," said Jake. A twittering cloud of pixies, who Puck had once explained loved dusk more than any other time of day, rose from a nearby tree.

Puck let out a mirthless laugh. "You weren't there when they threw me out. I don't."

"I'm not talking about Titania and Oberon," Jake said.

Puck's mouth twisted dangerously. "Don't be ridiculous. Relda, Tobias, Veronica, Henry…they don't see me as family. I just live in their house."

"That's not true, but I'm not talking about them either," Jake replied. His stomach, which had been writhing uncomfortably during this whole conversation, seemed to knot itself together. "I'm talking about me. You're my family, Puck, as much as anyone could be."

They stared at each other, Puck's mouth slightly open, Jake's a thin line. Jake had never realized how young and lost a four-thousand-year-old teenager could look. He reached over and patted him on the ankle. "I'm going go tell Robin Hood he needs to find a different way to get this done."

Puck said nothing. Most of the storm was gone from his face, but his eyes were as round as dinner plates.

"All right," said Jake, mostly to himself, feeling oddly distant from the boy he'd come to be so close to, and walked away as the last dregs of sunlight faded into oblivion.

Puck said up straight, wanting to say something. Jake hesitated in the threshold, and Puck thought he might speak, but then he sighed and shut the door behind him.

"Jake," said Puck, a second too late.

There was an unpleasant feeling in his gut that Puck recognized as guilt. He slid off the trampoline, about to go after him, before he remembered that he was Robin Brendin Goodfellow, he was the Trickster King, and he didn't care what anyone thought or felt, let alone an adult and much less someone who wanted favors from him. Turning in a circle, Puck redirected his feet and he dropped into his hammock, trying to forget about it. His hammock swung reassuringly back and forth for a matter of seconds before Puck was up again. He paced the full quarter of a mile around the edge of his room and then still felt shaky from bottled up energy.

He slipped into the hallway, opened Sabrina's door without knocking ("What the hell, Puck! Can't you ever knock? Get out of my room!"), slid her bay window open (Puck made a mental note to ask Boarman and Swineheart to build him his _own_ window so he could stop sharing Sabrina's) and threw himself out into the night (realistically, the only way he could leave the house without getting caught).

"I'm locking the window this time!" Sabrina hollered into the pitch black night that Puck had disappeared into. Scowling, she closed the window, dropped back onto her bed, rolled over onto her stomach, and returned her attention to her laptop screen.

"Okay," Sabrina muttered under her breath. She picked up her pencil and tapped it against her bottom lip. In front of her lay her current Grimm journal, the page covered in the messy scrawl she produced when she wrote quickly. She'd wanted to jot down all her thoughts after talking to Morgan and writing always helped her sort through information, figure out how things connected. The detective part of her brain was firing on all cylinders as she skimmed her notes, finally coming to a conclusion she'd written that was equal parts terrifying and exciting.

 _The Patchwork Girl is using the Ethereal Plane. That's why we can't find her._

And then, below it, a hunch she had that made her head hurt.

 _The Ethereal Plane connects us to the Land of Oz. The Shadow Men are from Oz. The Patchwork Girl is from Oz. The General and the Commander are from Oz. The Scarlet Hand originates in Oz._

She turned her attention to the stack of books she'd swiped from their library. The sheer amount of data that the Grimm family had about the people of Oz were almost overwhelming. She had already flipped through some of the books, glancing at tables of contents, opening to random pages, and stopping to skim passages regarding the Patchwork Girl or the Glass Cat.

But now, she was unwilling to waste time reading through dusty tomes. This new permutation of the Scarlet Hand was so unprecedented that she doubted a book would have helpful information. So Sabrina turned to the best tool of her generation, the Internet, and tapped a few keywords into Google before staring at the screen, bracing herself for this not to work….

And then her phone screen lit up with a loud _buzz_. Her concentration broken, Sabrina sighed and snatched it off her comforter.

 **Maddie:** _Omg omg omg omg_

 **Maddie:** _guys why isn't Puck texting me baaaaaack_

It was the group chat with the four of them, the one that Arianna had re-labeled _Resolution Girls._ Sabrina rolled her eyes and flipped her phone over so she couldn't see the screen. She turned back to the computer and hit _enter,_ raising an eyebrow when her search returned results. Choosing the second link, she settled down to read a long, complicated paragraph about the Patchwork Girl's creator's origins. It was dense and poorly written and she found it difficult to focus as her phone buzzed again and again.

 **Rachel:** _how long has it been_

 **Maddie:** _11 minutes! Almost 12!_

 **Arianna:** _girl_

 **Rachel:** _ur being ridiculous leave him alone maybe hes busy_

 **Maddie:** _but what if he's mad at me_

 **Arianna:** _why would he be mad at you_

 **Arianna:** _take a breath_

 **Maddie:** _briiiii_

 **Maddie:** _I know ur reading these and not answering as usual is he busyyyyyyyy_

Three minutes later:

 **Maddie:** _Bri whatcha doin_

Her blood boiling, Sabrina glanced at the window, debating throwing her phone out of it.

Her thumbs hovered over her phone screen as she tried to figure out what to say.

 _Yes, he actually just threw himself out of my window. He's probably doing moody loop de loops over the town and will be back in about an hour, if I had to guess based on the last time this happened._

Sabrina snorted and dropped her phone. Apparently it hadn't occurred to Puck to say anything to her before falling off the face of the known universe. But then it occurred to her just how many times Maddie could text her in an hour, and she picked the phone back up.

Sabrina had a fleeting thought about just how many phones she could own in her lifetime. Then she had a second fleeting thought about how she would probably still be around when phones became obsolete, and forced down a wave of nausea.

Thumbs to the keyboard.

 **Sabrina:** _idk I've been watching Netflix in my room for a while_

See? She told herself triumphantly. She didn't have to lie about everything! She _was_ in her room. Netflix _was_ on one of the many tabs open right now.

 **Maddie:** _can u go check and see if he's in his room_

 **Arianna:** _Maddie don't ask her to do that it's weird_

 **Rachel:** _oooh yes what is Puck doing rn_

 **Rachel:** _wait nvm Ari is right don't check_

Sabrina stared unseeingly at her screen while she waited for her phone to buzz again, but it didn't, which had to mean they were all waiting for her to answer Maddie.

She couldn't really pinpoint the reason why she loathed hearing about Puck and Maddie's budding relationship. Perhaps because Maddie was so irritating about it, or hell-bent on getting him to ask her to be his girlfriend before the summer was over. Or because neither of them seemed to care that it made her feel weird to hear about it, let alone be the point person between the two.

How could Maddie date him without even asking her?

Sabrina pressed her fingers against her eyes and counted to thirty.

 **Sabrina:** _he's not in his room. He's probably talking to Uncle Jake or something. Don't worry about it mads I'm sure he's not mad at you_

Again, Sabrina rolled her eyes. At least this was something truthful Sabrina could say. She'd overheard Jake and Puck's argument in the kitchen, and could say with enough certainty that whatever was troubling Puck, it had nothing to do with this random girl he'd met less than a year ago.

 **Maddie:** _okokok thank u bri sorry everyone I know I'm so annoying lol_

 **Arianna:** _lol_

 **Arianna:** _go to bed stop worrying about Puck_

 **Arianna:** _constant phone convos are not that important_

 **Rachel:** _yes they are_

 **Maddie:** _yes they are_

 **Arianna:** _Bri plz help me out here_

 **Sabrina:** _Phone convos are not important._

 **Sabrina:** _I'm going to bed goodnight!_

And with that Sabrina actually did turn off her phone and chuck it across the room. In landed squarely in the middle of the fleece blanket she'd folded neatly and left in the corner of her room once the weather had turned warm. Sabrina felt an odd satisfaction with the physical distance from the object that connected her to the entire world and more importantly her chatty friends, as if she was already a thousand years old and concerned about her privacy instead of just fifteen. She finally turned her full attention back to the screen and waited for Puck to return.

* * *

"Hey," Pinocchio said, poking his head in the doorway. "You ready?"

Sabrina, who had been staring unseeingly out the window at the misty morning, jumped at his voice and turned around. "No, not at all."

Pinocchio, who was dressed like he was going to an interview or something, had his backpack over his shoulder and looked completely alert for the ungodly hour. "Oh, come on, 'Brina. You've been at the pool practically every day this summer. You're nearly a fish. You're going to make the team, but if we don't get there by 7:45, you're first going to be late."

Stepping back, Pinocchio gestured down the hallway and toward the stairs, raising his eyebrows. Wringing her hands, Sabrina turned on her heel and dragged her feet across her bedroom floor as if she was heading to the gallows.

As he followed her down the stairs, Pinocchio continued the stream of nagging chatter. "Have you eaten breakfast yet? Do you have your backup pair of goggles? A towel?"

"Yes, yes, and yes," Sabrina grouched, pulling her hood up over her head to deflect his barrage of questions. She kicked on her converse and then had a vivid flash of her nightmare, which had been about her conversation with Morgan the night before. "Jeez Pinocchio, you act like I've never packed a pool bag before. I gotta tell you what Morgan told me."

As the crossed the chilly, dewy grass towards Granny's new car, Sabrina briefly recounted what Morgan had told her about the Ethereal Plane.

"You've been sitting in on more meetings than I have lately," Sabrina added as she climbed into the passenger seat. As Pinocchio started the car, she asked, "What are they really saying about the Commander and the General that they won't tell me and Puck about?"

Pinocchio gave her a dark look. They sat in silence as he maneuvered past all the other cars and out of the driveway, Pinocchio contemplating whether or not he should tell her, Sabrina watching him, holding her breath.

If he didn't tell her, then Sabrina would just go digging for her own answers, Pinocchio reasoned. God knows what she would find if he let that happen.

"Do you want the tactful version or the hardcore version?"

"Hardcore," Sabrina replied immediately.

"You can't tell Puck this," Pinocchio said.

"No problem," Sabrina grumbled, rolling her eyes. Puck had tumbled back in through her window around 11. She'd dutifully passed on the message that Maddie wanted to talk to him, and his expression had lightened and he'd bolted out of her room without a backward glance.

"First off, they're worried that your parent's kidnapping was actually part of a much bigger plan than we originally thought. We believe these higher-ups, the General and the Commander, have some sort of plan for your family. Something beyond what Mirror wanted."

Sabrina blinked; she had inferred most of this herself in the long hours she'd spent struggling to fall asleep. It made her skin crawl to make these connections between the threatening letters they'd received back in the city, the creepy note Baba Yaga had left behind, and now this.

"Do they have any idea what that plan is? Or any leads _at all_ as to who these people are? Come on, Pinocchio, I don't believe the adults when they say they have no idea."

Pinocchio took a deep breath. He knew Sabrina had been having a hard time lately, and that while her parents were trying to protect her, leaving her in the dark is somehow worse. "They aren't sure about what the plan is. But, they've concluded that at least one person—either the General, the Commander, or both—must be a fairy. So that's something."

Well, that was different from what she thought. She waited for Pinocchio to continue, and when he did not, she prompted, "And?"

"A _fairy,_ 'Brina. Who do we know who's a fairy?"

Pinocchio waited, chewing his lip, for Sabrina to put the pieces together.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh, come on. That's absolutely ridiculous. Puck couldn't possibly be wrapped up in the Scarlet Hand. He was eleven, for one thing. And, a total idiot. And also in _exile_."

"I know," Pinocchio replied calmly. "I mean, no one really thinks he was involved. They just think he might know more than he realizes."

"Is that the real reason they want him to go to Faerie? To gather information even though he's been left in the dark?" Sabrina asked. When Pinocchio gave her a quizzical look, she prodded, "What? I'm not deaf."

Pinocchio sighed. "They plan on telling you guys if he does decide to go. If not, I think they're going to hold off. You know how touchy he can be about his family."

"And because of him, they're leaving me out too?"

"Sorry, but you two have become a bit of a package deal," Pinocchio said. In response to the way Sabrina immediately bristled, he added loudly, "Just like Daphne and Red. Or Veronica and Snow."

"Well, the other half of my package deal has been so busy making out with one of _my_ friends that I've barely seen him," Sabrina said.

"They only kissed for the first time last week," Pinocchio corrected her matter-of-factly.

Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Sorry that I don't keep extreme tabs on Puck's love life like you do."

Pinocchio did not speak as he pulled into the parking lot of the swimming pool because he was struggling not to comment on the bitterness that had seeped into Sabrina's voice.

"Okay, enough Puck talk. Good luck, not that you need it, I'll be at Sacred Grounds working on my paper, so you'll meet me there afterwards, right?"

"Yes. Thanks for the ride," Sabrina replied, grabbing her backpack. She forced her feet out of the car and walked toward the pool entrance, forcing down the nervous nausea. In the pocket of her hoodie, she felt her phone buzz.

 **Rachel:** _Are you here?_

 **Rachel:** _In the locker room_

 **Rachel:** _I feel like im gonna hurl_

 **Rachel:** _like a MILLION upperclassmen here_

Sabrina snorted, feeling her own tension alleviate a tiny bit, and made her way into the locker room. Rachel was sitting on a bench in front of an open locker, pretending to be busy on her phone. A bunch of older girls who seemed to be ten feet taller than Sabrina milled around, changing or talking in small groups. Sabrina recognized most of them, and although she didn't usually feel intimidated by older girls, the nerves and the early hour made her hurry over to Rachel without making eye contact with anyone else.

"Hi," she said breathlessly, sliding onto the bench next to Rachel and reaching into one of the unoccupied lockers.

"There's a lot of people here," Rachel replied in a tense whisper. "I'm so nervous. What if we get cut?"

Rachel, who had been saying arrogantly all summer that there was no way they'd be doing cuts for the first year that Ferryport Landing would have a girl's swim team, looked as white as a sheet underneath her summer tan.

"We've been preparing for this. We're practically fish," Sabrina said, echoing Pinocchio's earlier words as she placed her converse at the floor of the locker and pulled her flip flops out of her swim bag. "Rache, did you eat anything this morning? You don't look so good."

"Not really," Rachel said, so quietly that Sabrina could barely understand her.

Sabrina rolled her eyes and produced a banana from her swim bag. "Eat. Quickly."

While Rachel ate, Sabrina hurried into the bathroom to change. When she emerged from her stall, she nearly walked into another girl, one she didn't recognize in the slightest.

"Oh, sorry," Sabrina said, swerving around her to get to the sink. Instead of entering the stall, the girl turned and stared at her. It wasn't until Sabrina made eye contact with her through the mirror that she seemed to snap out of it and disappeared into the stall.

Unsettled, Sabrina made her way back over to Rachel. She knew that look. That was the look that Everafters who were just meeting her gave her, a look of appraisal and skepticism.

 _This human?_ They seemed to say with their eyes. _Really? This is the one who ended the war?_

She'd been identified. But by who? Although people were moving into Ferryport Landing all the time, Sabrina was unaccustomed to not recognizing Everafters.

"Come on," Rachel said, pulling Sabrina's clothes out of her arms and stuffing them in her locker. Rachel shoved her pool bag into her arms and then saw the face she was making. "What's wrong, Bri?"

Behind them, the mystery girl emerged from the bathroom and crossed the locker room without looking in Sabrina's direction, heading for the pool deck.

"Do you know who that is?" Sabrina whispered, tilting her head in the girl's direction. Sometimes it paid off to be friends with the girl who seemed to know everyone.

"Yeah, that's Victoria Orizon," said Rachel, now walking toward the door herself. They were the last two people in the locker room. "She's new, a senior, just moved here over the summer. It must suck to pack up and move for one last year of school."

But Sabrina's mind had gotten stuck on the word _Orizon._ She knew that word. That meant something.

"I'll meet you out there in a second," she said to Rachel, who was on her way toward the door.

"Hurry!" Rachel chided, shaking her head.

Once she was gone and Sabrina was alone in the locker room, Sabrina whipped her phone out of her swim bag and did a quick Google search on the word _Orizon,_ to no , she scrolled frantically through her texts, searching for the group chat that included Puck, Daphne, Pinocchio and Red. Puck had affectionately named it _Smelly Bathroom,_ which was actually kind of fitting because most of their texts did seem to revolve around the bathroom.

 **Sabrina:** _Does anyone know what "Orizon" is? Could be a thing, place, spell?_

 **Sabrina:** _Don't tell the adults_

Without waiting for a response, Sabrina threw her phone back in her bag and ran out to the pool deck.

* * *

After tryouts, Sabrina and Rachel walked the few blocks to Sacred Grounds, grateful that the day had warmed up and that the most nerve-wracking thing they had to do was over.

"That really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," said Rachel. "Except for breaststroke. I really bombed the breaststroke. Do you think that's enough to cut me? Ugh, I can't even wait until tonight when we get the email with the team roster."

"No," replied Sabrina, struggling to simultaneously make conversation and check the twenty text messages in the _Smelly Bathroom_ group chat. "They just won't have you race breaststroke. I didn't feel great about my backstroke. I don't know. I guess I didn't really feel great about the whole thing."

"You were awesome," Rachel said, shaking her head. "Mrs. Torpey was so excited you were there."

Sabrina smiled at her friend. "You had the best dive off the blocks. Don't even worry."

Sabrina held the Sacred Grounds door open for Rachel.

"Thanks, Bri. Look, she's here already," Rachel said, pointing to a booth in the back where Arianna was sitting.

"I'm just going to say hi to Gus quickly."

Gus was Pinocchio's new moniker. He was sitting across the shop from their friends, working furiously on his computer.

"Oh! I'll come!" Rachel said, perking up. For reasons Sabrina could not understand, Rachel had developed a new fascination with the oldest "child" in the Grimm household.

"Hey," Sabrina breathed, approaching Pinocchio's booth. "Just checking in. How's the paper?"

Pinocchio brightened at the sight of company. "Hello Sabrina, Rachel. How were tryouts? And I'm on page 7 of 20 of this paper, so I'd say it's going pretty well."

"Tryouts went great!" Rachel leaned over Sabrina to look at the screen. "What's your paper about?"

As Pinocchio launched into an explanation about the French Bourbon Restoration that Sabrina had heard a thousand times, Sabrina went over to the counter and ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese. After Sacred Grounds had gotten a surge of popularity from the high school crowd, Buzzflower had started serving sandwiches. Rachel rejoined her as she was standing at the pickup counter. After Buzzflower slid the girls their sandwiches (Sabrina's along with a hash brown she didn't order and a wink), the girls made their way to the table where Arianna sat, sipping coffee.

"Welcome back!" Rachel cried, sliding into the booth next to Arianna and giving her a one-armed hug. "How was Maine?"

"Amazing," Arianna said, beaming. "We stayed at this adorable little cabin on a lake. We could kayak to the store! And, I did so much reading that I finished my resolution—I've read the whole of Lord of the Rings series."

"Good for you," Sabrina said before placing the hash brown on her sandwich and taking a gigantic bite. She felt hungry for the first time in about a week and a half.

"So, you're the first one to fulfill their resolution, then," Rachel said seriously. "And Sabrina, you'll know tonight. And _I_ am making some serious headway with Derek. Wait, is Maddie coming?"

"I don't think so," Arianna replied. "She said she was busy, but she didn't say what she was doing."

"She's with Puck," Sabrina said, battling the urge to roll her eyes.

"I thought she was coming, we haven't seen Arianna in a week," Rachel said, sitting up straight in indignation.

Arianna shook her head. "No, it's fine, she's happy."

"I wonder if _she's_ fulfilled her resolution," Rachel said, almost darkly. Arianna and Rachel both turned to Sabrina expectantly.

Sabrina froze mid-bite.

"No, she hasn't," she replied thickly. "As far as I know, they aren't officially dating."

Rachel scoffed and sat back in her seat while Arianna sipped her coffee delicately, looking anywhere other than her friends. Sabrina knew what the issue was, why Rachel was so sulky. She and Maddie had been best friends the longest. Both of their parents had divorced and moved to Ferryport Landing around the same time. They'd been through a lot together, and Rachel had wanted Maddie's support for swim tryouts. Instead, Maddie had been mostly MIA, usually hanging out with Puck, and although Sabrina knew her own support had been helpful, it just wasn't the same. For the first time, Sabrina thought that they were going through the same thing from different sides, and wondered if Rachel was also sick of hearing about Maddie and Puck.

Sabrina's phone buzzed. She'd been too distracted by her friends up until this point to properly read, but in the moody silence following their conversation about Maddie, Sabrina unlocked her phone and scrolled up to her question in _Smelly Bathroom._

 **Red:** _Orizon? Could u mean horizon?_

 **Pinocchio** : _Doesn't sound familiar to me. Don't think she means horizon._

 **Daphne:** _def heard of that before somewhere. I'll take a look. Good luck at tryouts!_

 **Red:** _yes good luck!_

 **Puck:** _who put my colon in the shower?_

 **Red:** _excuse me?_

 **Puck:** _I left it in one of the bathroom drawers last nite why did u move it_

 **Daphne:** _excuse me?!_

 **Pinocchio:** _he means cologne_

 **Red:** _I thought that was shampoo or something? Sorry_

Sabrina blew air through her nose. Her housemates were ridiculous. She scrolled all the way to the bottom of the group chat where the newest message from Daphne was, and jumped.

 **Daphne:** _Lake Orizon? Munchkin Country in the Land of Oz? Ring any bells?_

"Yes!" Sabrina hissed without thinking, feeling a surge of adrenaline run through her tired limbs. Perhaps her hunch was meaningful after all.

"What?" Rachel asked. "Did they email us early about tryouts?"

Sabrina gave her a blank look, so tired of thinking of lies on her feet that she wished she could fade into the seat behind her. "Oh, no. I just…so Arianna, what was your favorite part about Maine?"

* * *

The day was hot and sultry. Above Puck's head, leaves wearing their summer coats of acid green swayed in a breeze that he could not feel. Cicadas buzzed in the woods beyond and a lawn mower droned in the yard one door down, providing a constant low noise that Puck found welcome and that seemed to echo the buzzing that he felt underneath his skin. He breathed in the humid air, tasting the scent of freshly cut grass and human skin and an artificial perfume that was supposed to be lavender on his tongue.

"Look at that cloud," said Maddie, pointing at the clear-glass sky above them. "Doesn't it look like Mr. Ianello's head?"

They lay next to each other on the hammock in her backyard, their arms pressed together.

Puck, whose thoughts had been drifting back toward the fight he'd had with Jake, squinted. He could see a vague resemblance to the balding, unpleasant man who had taught their French class last year. He found it interesting that he had known Maddie for almost a full year. He would not have met her if they'd never returned to Ferryport Landing.

"Definitely," he replied. Maddie propped herself up on her elbows, her hair brushing against his chin and bringing with it another wave of artificial lavender.

Puck liked her hair, which fell just past her shoulders in tight blonde ringlets. He reached up and tugged on one, which she didn't mind as long as he didn't pull too hard.

"Are you excited to see Mr. Ianello again in just a few short days?" he joked.

Maddie scoffed and rolled her eyes, but when she looked at him again, she was smiling. "As long as we're in the same class, I don't mind."

Puck felt a hesitant smile curl the corners of his mouth in return. "I might mind a little. That man has it out for me."

"I'm very offended," Maddie said sarcastically, sinking back down beside him. "Especially since he's the only French teacher, so you'll have him either way."

"Oh, well," said Puck. "I guess I have no choice but to sit behind you and throw pencils at you all year long."

"You are so annoying," Maddie said, but she turned her head to look at him better. Her expression turned serious. "Will you still hang out with me during the school year? Even if you make the football team?"

"Of course," Puck said with a frown. "We can hang out all the time."

Then, feeling a twinge of uncertainty even as her expression lightened, Puck added, "If you want to hang out with someone as annoying as me, that is."

"I do," she replied. Before Puck could process was she was doing, Maddie turned toward him and then her mouth was on his, hesitant and warmer than the air. Puck felt a little lightheaded as he kissed her back. Neither of them were very experienced and he had no idea if what he was doing was right. She pressed her body against his and his heart began to race.

Today, he thought, it was so easy to pretend he was human.

Maddie pulled away first. "If you really want to keep hanging out with me, then maybe we should…we should make things official."

"Official?" Puck asked blankly. "What do you mean?"

Maddie was usually confident and unafraid to speak her mind, but Puck was pretty sure she was blushing. She looked at him shyly, and Puck stared back, suddenly frozen.

"Maddie," Puck prodded. "What?"

"Will you…will you be my boyfriend?"

 **A/N: Thanks so much for reading! Please let me know what you think!**


End file.
